A brief June update

The last four weeks, I have been photographing a German writer, Max Dorner, who came to New York to write about how a fast-paced city is perceived by a person with a slowed-down mobility. It was interesting to become more aware of the frictions, the pragmatism, and the strains of multiple and simultaneous paces within this city. Max Dorner will write a book on his experiences and probably will publish a preview in the German magazine "Das Magazin" this fall. Both, the book and magazine text, will hopefully be accompanied by some of my images. I will keep you updated.

Also, there are a couple group exhibitions in the works. One will be organized by Michael Bühler-Rose. It will center around his idea of "New Geographics" and will focus on former students of Andrea Robbins and Max Becher. I will probably show works from my "mixed messages" series. I will exhibit works from the same series at "Contemporary Flânerie: Reconfiguring Cities", organized by fellow University of Florida alumni Vagner Whitehead (March 2009). A third group show, "The Prairie", is organized by another UF-alumni, Summer Zickefoose (February 2009). For this exhibition, I will produce a new, map-like work from images I have taken in the mid-West last year. Both group shows will likely be traveling. There are more exhibitions planned, but it is yet too early to share the information here. Please check back later. I also hope to get the opportunity to show the works in progress that I am currently producing: "Critical Distance" (see previous book announcement) and other works relating to East Germany. In the fall of 2009, after all, it will be the 20th anniversary of the social and political changes, the "Wende", in the former GDR.

The Bechers at the MoMA

It doesn't need many words to "review" an exhibition by the Bechers. It's always a treat, and this latest show at the MoMA is no different. And of course, with the recent and unfortunate death of Bernd Becher, one could probably expect a number of retrospective shows.

The MoMA shows many work groups that most of us are already familiar with. But it is always a pleasure to look at these prints up-close and in context. I also enjoy how the Bechers draw wider (art-)historical connection, like their take on Walker Evans' photograph of Bethlehem, PA. The Bechers certainly owe a lot of their success to photographers like August Sander as well as to the emergence of conceptual art in the early 1970s, but I find it amazing how much they have -- in return -- influenced photographers ever since, whether they were their students, like the Struffkys, or all the stripes and shapes of contemporary typologists. I just find it sad, though, how typologies have become such an uncritical, widespread and easily marketable trend in photography. Is it just a too-easy formula for today's art students, from Leipzig to New York, often neglecting the passion and dedication the Bechers had for their subject matter and project? Or is it rather the art market that too-easily "recognizes" typologies as (salable/desirable) "Art"? Probably both.

Well, in any case, if you are in New York, please plan a trip to MoMA's photography gallery and indulge in truly fine works of Bernd and Hilla Becher.

Photo Festival in Dumbo

This weekend, I went to the highly anticipated New York Photo Festival in Dumbo. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met. And I don't think it was the rain. The ticket prices and general cash-in attitudes from the organizers might have left a slightly bitter taste however. A local gallerist even called it the "typical powerHouse sleaziness", referring to one of the main hosts of the festival. I'd like to give the Dumbo-based publishing company the benefit of the doubt and hope that it wasn't only a self-serving event with photographers and photo-enthusiasts being the paying content-providers and mere advertising targets. Plus, some of the shown work in the various exhibitions was not bad.

The best show was definitely Tim Barber's Various Photographs. I liked how he leveled the playing field, allowing each of the invited photographers, whether well-known or emerging, the same image size, displaying all 300 photographs democratically in a wall-spanning grid. Suddenly, the star photographer found himself dwarfed by the work of the newcomer next to him. Unfortunately, Barber didn't look to hard outside his "Vice" circles for talents, making the exhibition a rather homogeneous one despite the vast number of images.


The best work in The Ubiquitous Image, curated by Lesley A. Martin, was for me Claudia Angelmaier's reflections on reproduction and seriality. I had encountered her work before at the open studio exhibition of the HGB Leipzig in 2005. I am intrigued by her concept and execution, and found myself lost in the details of the reproductions of reproductions of old drawings and prints. However, I think Angelmaier enlarged the images beyond their capacity, which is obviously a nod toward the market and in step with the more recent German photographic traditions.

Martin Parr’s exhibit, New Typologies, seems almost redundant. How many times can we rehash this serial tradition in photography? Of course, the simplicity of this comparative strategy with its often aesthetically pleasing photographs is a safe way to "bring order to the chaos around us," as the festival website states. I find it rather boring. And I am rather annoyed that even photographers like Parr can't resist to curate a show based on typologies. To write at least something positive about this particular exhibition, I would say Jan Kempenaers' series of old concrete structures and monument was quite intriguing.

All in all, I would say the first attempt of New York Photo Festival was almost successful, but could not, as I mentioned before, fulfill my expectations. There was just too much hype prior to the festival and somewhat mediocre execution of the actual event. It definitely wasn't Houston. But with more restraint on attitudes and prices, and more emphasis on quality, the next installment of this festival could become an actual success.

Review: Talents II

On Monday, I went to see the second installment of "Talents: New Photography from Berlin" at the Goethe Institut in collaboration with the C/O Galerie Berlin (one would think that between the two the exhibition wouldn't be so poorly presented). "Talents II" shows recent works by two artists, Frank Berger and Tobias Zielony. Since both artists work in photographic series, it was not surprising that they each chose to use slide projections to present their respective images. Although Frank Berger's concept and work was certainly intriguing, I would like to focus here on Tobias Zielony and his work, which I have encountered first at the Neue Galerie Weimar during the presentation of the Marion-Ermer-Award 2004 (which he had shared, by the way, with the fantastic e-team).

This time around, a few blocks down from New York's Neue Galerie, Zielony shows an international selection of youths: from Halle/Neustadt, Los Angeles, Marseille, and Bristol/Newport. Besides the global street wear fashion, all these kids seem to share working class or marginalized backgrounds and bleak neighborhoods. They are photographed in the twilight between day and night as well as child- and adulthood. The dominant colors are the greens and oranges of the neon and street lights, and the blue hues of the night.

Zielony succeeds in depicting a sense of desperation and urgency behind the apparently universal display of boredom and posing of his adolescent subjects. Many of his images seem to be the documentary equivalent of Gregory Crewdson's staged photo-productions and carry the intimacy of Ryan McGinly pictures - just not as optimistic.

Zielony claims that he is more of an accomplice to these kids than a mere observer. But I don't think so. There is an apparent distance between him and them. While McGinley, for example, imagines himself amongst his models in an utopian world of everlasting fun, sex, drugs and games, Zielony seems deeply skeptical of the life in front of his camera. He might empathize, but he would not trade his life for theirs. I suspect that he seeks to justify his gaze, but I think his critical view is justification enough.

The representation of life on the margins follows a long tradition, and the emotional weight of Zielony's images, whether they depict depressed East German or French immigrant neighborhoods, might help to define for our generation where all these neo-liberal societies fail.

BorderBlog update

I just uploaded new images to BorderBlog. This update features contributions by Zaneta Zubkova (the Russian-Lithuanian border), Lisa Ruyter (Cairo), Tom Licht (cruise ship) and myself. Please check it out and feel free to send me your own images at any time. Thanks to all current and future contributors.

BorderBlog

Here are two recent images

Click on image to enlarge!

Helen Levitt

This Sunday, I had the chance and special honor to meet -- if only briefly -- Helen Levitt. I visited the 94-year old photographer with a bouquet of flowers on behalf of the Sprengel Museum Hannover (Germany) to congratulate her. Levitt was awarded this year's "Spectrum" Prize of the Foundation Lower Saxony in collaboration with the Sprengel Museum. On display at the latter is a comprehensive retrospective of Levitt's work (through May 25th).

Levitt had discovered her interest in photography early, and was mentored during her first steps by Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Walker Evans in particular. She started to document the streets of New York and has created through her straight but intimate approach some of the most iconic images of this city and its people ever since. She now almost stands as a synonym for the genre of "street photography".

Review: Archives and Collections at the ICP

I have been quite intrigued by Okwui Enwezor's curatorial projects ever since documenta 11 in 2002 and his visit at the Whitney Study Program while I attended it (2003-04). And of course the current feisty exchange with Robert Storr in Artforum made me particularly curious as to Enwezor's latest project, an exhibition entitled "Archive Fever - Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art" at the International Center of Photography here in New York. "Archive Fever" seems to derive from Jacques Derrida's book by the same name in which the French philosopher takes up the subject of the archive, submitting it to one of his notorious deconstructive analyses.

Coming down the stairs into ICP's basement gallery, I was startled by the curator's choice to board-up half the walls with plywood. I know that white gallery walls are not very fashionable in academic art circles, but to justify the look with imagining the archive as "a dim musty place full of drawers, filing cabinets, and shelves laden with old documents" seems a bit far fetched. In fact, most contemporary archives are probably highly lit, climate controlled, fireproof and clean institutional spaces. Even places like the expansive East German Stasi archives were probably never housed in raw plywood rooms. Whatever Enwezor's reasons were, the choice of presentation is rather distracting from showing how "artists have appropriated, interpreted, reconfigured and interrogated archival structures and materials."

One of my favorite works in the exhibition was Fazal Sheikh's "Afghan Images", a series of black and white photographs depicting hands holding small photos of loved ones who were killed or disappeared, mostly during the Soviet-Afghanistan War. Accompanied by wall texts with the back stories, these images provide a glimpse into the complicated, complex and painful recent history of Afghanistan, especially in light of the simplistic and rather reactionary film "Wilson's War", which just hit the theaters.

I always love to see a film by Harun Farocki being included in an exhibition, even though I am not quite sure why one encounters his work lately more in visual art institutions and biennials rather than movie theaters and film festivals. "Videograms of a Revolution" is a fine piece of work about the end of Ceauşescu rule in Romania, but definitely not my favorite film by this underappreciated German filmmaker. Anri Sala's "Intervista" on the other hand, seems more successful in investigating the fault lines of recent Eastern European history. Sala found an old 16mm reel depicting his mother with then-Albanian-communist-leader Enver Hoxa. Anri Sala had little information about this event and the film's audio track was lost. So, Sala set out to document his investigation about the content and context of this film reel.

Other works in the show included a poignant series of staged photographs by Zoe Leonard, called "The Fae Richards Photo Archive", found images arranged by Tacita Dean ("Floh"), and Sherri Levine's notorious "After Walker Evans" photographs. All these works challenge authenticity and authorship, and question the meaning of images and their archives as valid historical inscriptions. And then there were the usual suspects. I am actually getting tired of encountering Struffskys in ever new contexts of various group exhibitions. But yes, "Archive Fever" also includes Thomas Ruff and two of his "Machines" photographs. I wonder why Enwezor didn't opt for the Bechers instead. I mean one won't find a more rigorous archive than their building typologies.

But the one thing I really would love to know from the curator is: What was the huge stack of white letter-size paper for? It was placed at the entry of the exhibition with a sign encouraging visitors "Take One". A blank sheet of paper? For notes? My personal archive? I just couldn't decipher the purpose. Perhaps I need to read some more Derrida. In any case, I would definitely recommend this exhibition to anyone academically minded and/or interested in the subject of the archive and documentary.

Upstairs was a separate and intriguing show by conceptual artist and photographer Barbara Bloom, called "The Collections of Barbara Bloom". Although, I have to admit, I knew very little about the artist beforehand, I was really happy to have encountered her work at the occasion. Bloom's various installations through which she is "questioning appearances, exploring the desire for possessions, and commenting on the act of collecting" were very informative. I really enjoyed "Framing", for example, a collection of salon-style hanged photographs (from between 1981 to 2006). Not only were the images and their grouping amazing, but each photograph was framed differently, applying effectively various conceptual strategies. I will certainly try to seek out more information about the artist and hope to see more of her works in future shows. And if you haven't encountered Barbara Bloom's work before either, here is a great chance at the ICP to see some really interesting conceptual art.

Re-Printed: Critical Distance

Finally, the re-printed copies of "Critical Distance" have arrived. In December, the printing company had agreed to take back the remaining, poorly printed books and re-print them. The newly printed books are still not perfect, but look much better than before. Unfortunately, since "Critical Distance" is a limited edition and some books had already been distributed, I could only re-print those copies I still had here. So, I would like to offer to all who already own a copy of "Critical Distance" to either exchange their book or buy another one at cost (plus shipping). I will also send out all recently ordered books soon. Thank you for your patience.

You can order a signed copy of "Critical Distance" (2007) right here. Please use this e-mail link also for all other inquiries. Thank you for your interest.

Just sharing a new image of mine with you ...