Berliner Salon: The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and Alec Soth
Disclaimer: the following post is biased, self-indulgent, anecdotal and probably too long for a blog.
Yesterday I had the delight of seeing one of my all time favorite people for the first time in almost two years, the brilliantly poetic photographer Alec Soth. Alec was in Berlin for two openings, Dog Days, Bogotá at Wohnmaschine and Fashion Magazine, Paris/Minnesota at C/O Berlin, the latter of which was being presented in conjunction with the annual Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, given this year to Esko Männikkö. Alec had been shortlisted for the prize in 2006, which was ultimately rewarded to Art21 Season 4 artist Robert Adams, who then promptly donated the entire £30,000 cash award to a human rights organization.
I first came to know Alec when he was picked up by Gagosian Gallery, where I had recently begun working after graduating from a small liberal arts college in Vermont. The combination of a modest, laid-back Minnesota native and an idealistic and totally naïve Vermont transplant, both (relatively) new to the elite milieu that is Gagosian had the potential to be utterly disastrous. Fortunately, we somehow managed to survive his first exhibition at the gallery, despite the opening being pushed up by several months, not to mention technical difficulties at the printers and a slew of other behind-the-scenes obstacles.
Alec’s show, NIAGARA, was well received and the accompanying monograph, published by Steidl, won that year’s Golden Light Book Award. He is a Magnum Photos associate photographer and he was recently exhibited at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and yet, Alec remains one of the most humble, self-deprecating and genuine artists, with whom I have had the pleasure of working. “I was just in China and I’ve been wearing the same clothes for I don’t know how many days. I just want to hide,” he told me before leaving Wohnmaschine to give his speech at C/O Berlin. “Don’t worry,” I assured him, “wearing the same clothes for multiple days means you’re truly a Berliner.”
When addressing the audience that had gathered in C/O’s upper floor in honor of the Deutsche Borse, Alec stayed true to form, emphasizing that he had, in fact, been a Deutsche Börse “loser.” His works on view, a series of photographs depicting the world and personalities of couture fashion, are not emblematic of his signature style (typically melancholic portrayals of banal beauty and subtle humanity), which Alec also noted. “These are fashion photographs, but I’m not a fashion photographer. There are also advertising photographs, but I’m not an advertising photographer…and I’m here in Berlin, with stylish 20 year-olds everywhere I look, but as you can see,” he gestured towards his black t-shirt over black jeans, “I’m not really stylish, and so I’m not really a Berliner.”
The connection between Alec’s photography and the shortlisted nominees for this year’s prize is precisely the social conscious, however fragile, that Dog Days, Bogota exposes. Images of forlorn stray animals, vacant decaying living quarters and other intimate spaces, wide-eyed children and overcast ramshackle urban landscapes dominate the exhibition. Similarly, John Davies (UK), Jacob Holdt (Denmark), Esko Männikkö (Finland) and Fazal Sheikh (USA) all address these themes through their individual lenses, converging in an exhibition that speaks of the human spirit, as well as the pain that we, as a collective society, inflict on ourselves and on our natural habitat.
The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize will be exhibited at C/O Berlin through July 18. Dog Days, Bogota will be on view at Wohnmaschine until June 28. Both exhibitions are absolutely worth seeing and every photographer included should be accredited with contributing a powerful and honest voice to the international discourse of contemporary art and photographic imagery. Schoenes Wochenende.
Photography on Photography at The Met
Last September, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a new gallery on the second floor dedicated exclusively to contemporary photographs. The second exhibition in this space, Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium Since 1960, opens to the public today.
This exhibition, organized by Doug Eklund, Assistant Curator in the Met’s Department of Photographs, includes Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3), Sherrie Levine, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Prince, Thomas Ruff, Vito Acconci, Kota Ezawa, Moyra Davey, Mary Wyse, and others. Malcolm Daniel, Curator in charge of the Department says, “This new selection [from the permanent collection] takes a narrower focus, showing how photographs since Conceptual Art have reflected on the medium itself in their work. With many more works by younger artists, the installation also provides more of a snapshot of where photography is at the moment.” Photography on Photography is on view through October 19, 2008.
Photographs began to enter the Met’s collection as early as 1928. Today their photography collection alone includes more than 20,000 works. A quick search through the Met’s online collection database returns names familiar to Art21 such as Ann Hamilton, William Wegman (both Season 1), Gabriel Orozco (Season 2), Robert Adams, and Laurie Simmons (both Season 4). Learn more about the Met’s photography department and its collection here.
Robert Adams | Books & Gravures
EXCLUSIVE: Robert Adam’s with photogravure plates for Harney County, Oregon (1999-2003) in his Oregon studio.
Robert Adams’s black-and-white photographs document scenes of the American West, revealing the impact of human activity on the last vestiges of wilderness and open space. An underlying tension in Adams’s body of work is the contradiction between landscapes visibly transformed or scarred by human presence and the inherent beauty of light and land rendered by the camera.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Robert Adams.
LEARN: Robert Adams is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Ecology of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Robert Adams, Harney County, Oregon, 1999-2003. © Robert Adams. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Doug Dunderdale. Editor: Steven Wechsler. Artwork courtesy: Robert Adams. Thanks: Matthew Marks Gallery & Fraenkel Gallery.
Tonight: “The Influence of the New West” panel on Robert Adams at New School
TONIGHT!
The Influence of the New West
Confounding Expectations: Photography in Context
Originally published in 1974, Robert Adams’s The New West signaled a significant shift in photographic representation of the American landscape. Adams focused on the construction of tract and mobile homes, subdivisions, and urban sprawl in the Denver area, where he lived at the time. The impact of this body of work, as well as ongoing issues related to our not-so-delicate relationship with the Western landscape, will be the subject of a panel discussion moderated by Michelle Dunn Marsh, deputy director of Aperture Foundation. Panelists will include Joshua Chuang of the Yale University Art Gallery, who is currently working with Robert Adams on his 2010 retrospective exhibition; acclaimed landscape photographer Mark Klett; and Shane Coen, principal and founder of Coen + Partners, a nationally renowned landscape architecture practice.
The evening’s conversation will kick off with a video excerpt from the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary series on contemporary art, Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century, featuring Robert Adams speaking about the making of The New West.
7:00 pm
The New School
Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
New York, New York
(212) 229-5353
Free and open to the public.
Robert Adams affected by Northwest storms, speaks with Bloomberg
Season 4 artist Robert Adams, who lives in Astoria, Oregon, survived last week’s hurricane, after losing power and his phone line for a few days (see images of the storm and its aftermath here). Rebounding quickly, he made time to speak with Bloomberg reporter Farah Nayeri about his current show at Fondation Cartier and the current state of contemporary art.
“What I would like to do is do what art has traditionally done: find a way to an affirmation,” he says. “I see the words ‘contemporary art’ and I begin to run the other direction. It seems to signify one thing: money.”
Read the full interview here.
[via Bloomberg]
Robert Adams: On the Edge at Fondation Cartier
Robert Adams, who was recently featured in Art:21 — Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 4, recently opened his first solo show in France. On view in the exhibition, titled On the Edge, are approximately 150 photographs that illustrate Adams’ lifelong devotion to the western American landscape and reflect both devastating and hopeful visions of the environment. Although human figures are usually absent from Adams’ photographs, their influence is easily perceived: a billboard mounted on a tree-covered hill, construction of suburban housing projects, graffiti in an otherwise tranquil desert view, or the consequences of “clear-cutting,” a practice of quickly and completely cutting down forests that the American West has witnessed over a period of time.
The photographic component of On the Edge is constructed around Adams’ views on the rural and urban landscape surrounding him while looking eastward and westward from his home. He is intrigued by the thought that “if we face eastward we confront the remains of what was, until we destroyed it, one of the world’s great rainforests, while if we face westward we contemplate the open sea, not itself unharmed but still beautiful and carrying with it, as all beauty does, a suggestion of promise.” Robert Adams lives on the west coast of the United States.
On the Edge is on view through January 27, 2008.
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
261, Blvd Raspail
75014 Paris
France
Watch a clip from Adams’ Art:21 segment:
See more images from the exhibition here.
Spotlight on Ecology: Robert Adams
Robert Adams was born in Orange, New Jersey in 1937. His refined black-and-white photographs document scenes of the American West of the past four decades, revealing the impact of human activity on the last vestiges of wilderness and open space. Although often devoid of human subjects, or sparsely populated, Adams’ photographs capture the physical traces of human life: a garbage-strewn roadside, a clear-cut forest, a half-built house. An underlying tension in Adams’ body of work is the contradiction between landscapes visibly transformed or scarred by human presence and the inherent beauty of light and land rendered by the camera. Adams’ complex photographs expose the hollowness of the 19th Century American doctrine of Manifest Destiny, expressing somber indignation at the idea (still alive in the 21st Century) that the West represents an unlimited natural resource for human consumption. But his work also conveys hope that change can be effected, and it speaks with joy of what remains glorious in the West. Adams received a BA from the University of Redlands in California and a PhD in English from the University of Southern California. He has received numerous awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (1994); the Spectrum International Prize for Photography (1995); and the Deutsche B√∂rse Photography Prize (2006). Major exhibitions include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005); Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (2002); Denver Art Museum (1993); Philadelphia Museum of Art (1989); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1979). Adams lives and works in northwestern Oregon.
Watch a clip from Adams’ Art:21 segment.
About his work, Adams says, “I’d like to document what’s glorious in the West and remains glorious, despite what we’ve done to it. I’d like to be very truthful about that. But I also want to show what is disturbing and what needs correction…You’re always in quest for the picture which will catch both, and occasionally that happens.”(excerpted from the companion book Art in the Twenty-First Century 4, p. 66).
Read more about his work and watch additional clips on his Art:21 webpage here.
Have you experienced Adams’ work in person, or did you have an opportunity to view his segment in one of the hundreds of Art21 Access ‘07 events that have been taking place all month? Share your thoughts on Robert Adams by leaving a comment below.
Robert Adams: Questions for an Overcast Day
This past Saturday, Matthew Marks Gallery in New York City opened an exhibition of new photographs by Robert Adams, a featured artist in the upcoming Season 4 episode Ecology.
Adam‚Äôs refined black-and-white photographs document scenes of the American West over the past four decades, revealing the impact of human activity on the last vestiges of wilderness and open space continues in this new show, entitled Questions for an Overcast Day. The exhibition displays a series of 33 photographs of young alder trees growing along the Oregon coastline, near the artist’s home. The series begins by focusing on the branches of the trees and, progressing from one image to the next, narrows its focus, culminating with several images of a single leaf.
The leaves on the trees appear perforated, the precise cause of which is unknown. The artist likens the particular pattern of erosion on each leaf to hieroglyphics, reading in them a unique “calligraphy of disaster.” About them, Adams writes:
“What would account for the condition of the leaves ‚Äì
drought, insects, rocky ground, disease, herbicide, wind?Are the leaves beautiful?”
Robert Adams: Questions for an Overcast Day will be on view at Matthew Marks Gallery through October 27, 2007.
