René Groebli »

Meine ersten neunzig Jahre

30 September - 24 November, 2017

Exhibition opening: Friday, 29 September, 5–8pm

Johanna Breede PHOTOKUNST

Fasanenstr. 69, 10719 Berlin
T +49 (0)30-889 13 590
photokunst@breede.de
www.johanna-breede.com
www.facebook.com/Johanna-Breede
Tue-Fri 11am-6pm + by app.

They say that love never ends. It hopes for everything and seeks the truth; it does not bear grudges; it sustains. Perhaps one only needs to learn to see properly – with eyes willing to believe and to tolerate everything. Eyes anticipating a stretched back to suggest the grace of Nike with broken wings and a fleeting pose to suggest a poetic "film noir". The Swiss photographer René Groebli has such eyes - they transform the world. His eyes create a sensual landscape from an elongated neck and the white flag of Eros from a negligee draped on a hanger.

René Groebli is said to have eyes of love. The photographer, born 1927 in Zurich, published his most important photo book to date in 1954, choosing the romantic title: "The Eye of Love". At that time not many people understood this. At least in the "old" Europe the compilation of 25 black and white images turned out to be a shelf-warmer. The much too prude 1950s still had to get used to this type of subjective and simultaneously radical sensual imagery. Whereas Edward Steichen soon purchased prints from the book for the MoMA, New York, Swiss critics considered the images, created by Groebli two years earlier in a rundown hotel room in the Paris district of Montparnasse, as suggestive and too frivolous. Today, the thin, then self-published small book is a classic. The often blurry portraits and body studies, taken by the 26 year old photographer of his wife Rita Groebli in Paris, not only show the talent for composition and cinematographic eye he possessed – the small photo book is above all a fragile ode to love per se. For the magical tenderness, which Groebli was able to capture in front of tattered wallpaper and worn furniture, transcended the situation of two people in a hotel. In the many poses and silhouettes Groebli‘s eyes not only sought what was tangible. He sought the image which surpassed all other images.

On October 9, René Groebli will turn 90. On the occasion of this birthday the Berlin gallery Johanna Breede PHOTOKUNST is showing the exhibition "My First Ninety Years", paying tribute to perhaps one of the most important Swiss photographers of the 20th century, next to Werner Bischof and Robert Frank. The total of 36 works – many from the legendary 1954 photo book – represent the work of a great visionary, who not only sought to capture the perfect form but also subjective perception.

Groebli was looking for much more than love. Before the trained documentary cameraman engaged in looking at the fleeting play of shadows and body parts during several nights in Paris, he had worked and traveled half the world as a photo reporter for the "Züricher Woche" – later also for "Life", "Picture Post" and the English agency "Black Star". He had seen the bitter poverty in Ireland and the oil crisis in the Middle East. His portraits of people – such as that of the aging Charlie Chaplin or the young photographer Robert Frank – are the expression of great compassion; his series appear to be incomparable films made up of photos. But what would all this aestheticism have been without love? Without his gaze on Rita’s dimple or the negligee on a hanger? As the saying goes, without love everything would be nothing. The eye of love, however, transforms the world. (Ralf Hanselle)

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