Saturday, October 18, 2008

Street and Studio: an urban history of photography


I found an image that reminded me of Melanni's interactive Photo Project and as I linked to the website for the Museum Folkwang, I realised it was in German, so I translated it and copied the entire page here:

The exhibition Street & Studio. An urban history of photography presented with approximately 300 exhibits from the 19th and 20 First century, the fascinating story of two central places of production of the photographic medium. It was created in cooperation with the Tate Modern, London. Through the work of Diane Arbus, Cecil Beaton, Brassai, Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Cindy Sherman, Malick Sidibé, Juergen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans, Weegee and others establishes the dynamic interactions exhibition of photographic practice on the road and in the studio open. Since the beginning of the 20th Century photography shapes the picture of the emerging western metropolises with their different backgrounds. Street & Studio displays different genres and ways of working, which is due to host its geographic situation, until today have developed and developing photography as a medium of the city.



Philip Kwame Apagya

Francis in Manhattan

1996

(c) Philip Apagya / Courtesy Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp

The studio photography features in the late 19th Century often formalized and standardized production of portraits. Photographers searched ambitious in the unity of the studio on your ideas such portrait to "construct", both with experimental techniques as well as in presentation emphasizes abbildungshaften ways. In the 1920s and 1930s, these techniques of staging in the flourishing portraits and fashion studios further refined. The use of unusual props and backgrounds is still part of the studio culture, like the contemporary self-portraits of Samuel Fosso, the large pictures by Adrian Paci and order photographs by Lee Sang To show.



James Van Der Zee

American Legioneer, District of Columbia 1937

Photographic Collection, Museum Folkwang, Essen

(c) Estate of the Artist










With the development of small and easily hidden cameras around the turn of the century, the road developed into an important ground for the photography. It was possible, people in unexpected, momenthaften and even intimate moments to photograph. The street extended the studio and invited to new visual adventures and exploration of everyday life, such as Jacques-Henri Lartigue's snapshots in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, Walker Evans portraits of anonymous passers in New York or the contemporary portraits of Valérie Jouve.



Photo Booth, Photomaton

German Women

1928-45

(c) Photographic Collection, Museum Folkwang, Essen

With the development of small and easily hidden cameras around the turn of the century, the road developed into an important ground for the photography. It was possible, people in unexpected, momenthaften and even intimate moments to photograph. The street extended the studio and invited to new visual adventures and exploration of everyday life, such as Jacques-Henri Lartigue's snapshots in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, Walker Evans portraits of anonymous passers in New York or the contemporary portraits of Valérie Jouve.



Roads and studio photography have their own stories and developed methods of illustration. The exhibition at the Museum Folkwang allows a simultaneous look at the two sites of photography and shows cross-border issues and working methods. The highly staged photographs by Robert Doisneau or fashion photographers of the 1950s such as William Klein, show how the road to the stage was. Helmar Lerskis series heads of everyday life and Andreas Serranos portraits of homeless people show how the photography studio in time to the street opened, and often took their momentum.


In the center of the exhibition is the question of how the photograph the image of the modern metropolis with their different social milieu has influenced. Graphically, this dimension of the exhibited books and magazines, which illustrate how the worlds of stars and celebrities and the world of everyday life, the ideal of studios and the realism of the street gradually merge.
Pieter Hugo

Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Lagos, Nigeria 2007

Courtesy Gallery Bertrand & Gruner

(c) Pieter Hugo, Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

The exhibition is the publication "Street & Studio. An urban history of photography. " Eds Ute Eskildsen, in cooperation with Florian Ebner and Bettina Kaufmann, Tate Publishing. With texts by Susanne Holschbach, Florian Ebner, Michael Bracewell and Jeremy Millar. 224 pages, numerous color, Price: 21.00 euros at the Museum

Opening times: Tues - S0 10-18 clock
Admission: 5.00 / 3.50 euros

1 comment:

m m said...

wow! that's strange that those are in grid format too-- I can't tell though through reading the text if those are from a studio or a photo booth? I like thinking about the amalgamation of the the 'street' and 'studio'. This also reminds me of the piece that you told us about in which you invited people from the street up to your studio. There's a lot of interesting cross-sections.