Horst: Photographer of Style, currently on show at the V&A museum in London, presents the definitive retrospective exhibition of the work of master photographer Horst P. Horst (1906-1999) – one of the leading photographers of the 20th century. In his illustrious 60-year career, German-born Horst worked predominantly in Paris and New York and creatively traversed the worlds of photography, art, fashion, design, theatre and high society. Horst’s career straddled the opulence of pre-war Parisian haute couture and the rise of ready-to- wear in post-war New York and his style developed from lavish studio set-ups to a more austere approach in the latter half of the 20th century. Horst: Photographer of Style displays 250 photographs, alongside haute couture garments, magazines, film footage and ephemera, revealing lesser-known aspects of Horst’s work: nude studies, travel photographs from the Middle East and patterns created from natural forms. Horst: Photographer of Style runs until January 4th 2015 at V&A museum in London.
Horst P. Horst – Images courtesy of Condé Nast/Horst Estate
After this spring’s successful “Capa in Color” exhibition, the International Center of Photography brings a selection of Robert Capa’s photographs to Governors Island. presents a fascinating look into the color work of this master of photography, giving new insight into how tenaciously he operated as a photojournalist in an era dominated by black-and-white. Though there wasn’t a market for colour war photographs, Capa regularly shot in colour, as well as black-and-white. The colour images of his postwar career contain little of the political gravity of his war stories, instead reflecting a more peaceful and prosperous vision of the world. Some of these photographs were published in magazines of the day, but the majority have never been printed, seen, or even studied. Over the years, this aspect of Capa’s career has virtually been forgotten.
“At Governors Island: Capa in Color” will run until September 28th 2014.
In 1971 Larry Clark wrote on the pages of Camera magazine: “I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in January 1943. When I was 16 I started shooting valo. Valo was a nasel inhaler you could buy at the drugstore for a dollar with a tremendous amount of amphetamine in it. We would work up a shot and shoot it. I shot with my friends everyday through high school. When I was eighteen I left Tulsa and went to art school and studied photography. In 1963 I went back to Tulsa and shot valo and took pictures for a few months. Then I went to New York City to become a magazine photographer but I was drafted so I did two years in the army.”
“All my friends back in Tulsa were into burglary and armed robbery and did time in the penitentiary. Also my younger sister was now shooting. I went back two or three times and in 1968 I spent the summer with my friends and did pictures and 16mm film and tape recordings. I didn’t do many pictures because there was so much dope around. We had more than you could shoot. We lived in an apartment with some girls who were prostitutes and then had some tricks who were doctors so we had everything from liquid amphetamine to morphine pharmaceutical. The police were hot on everybody and busted the door down a few times. I was arrested for weed in one bust and the police took my camera and film and recorder and tape. I got the recorder and camera back a year later abut they still have some film and tape.”
As direct and unmediated as his words, Larry Clark’s early projects Tulsa and Teenage Lust depict violence, sex and drug use with rawness, unpolished truth and subjectivity. These two series, on which Clark worked between 1963 and 1983, and which established his reputation, are currently on show at Foam Museum in Amsterdam. Larry Clark – Tulsa/Teenage Lust will run through September 12th 2014.
Candida Höfer is often defined an archeologist of the present: her work captures our collective memory, serves as a reminder of our past and a guide for our future. Her images are ethereal, yet emotionally charged, capturing buildings devoid of people, yet making us understand “that the places were made specially for them”. Customarily devoid of human presence, yet resonating with the academic spirit of the institution’s founder, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the Villa Borghese series, currently on show at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London, encapsulates Höfer’s sensitivity to place.
Commissioned by the Galleria Borghese in 2012 for their “Committenze Contemporanee” project, Höfer’s Villa Borghese series captures the institution’s architectural splendour and history. The statues raised on blue plinths in each image form part of the Galleria’s rich narrative. First owned by the Galleria, sold to French collectors, and then loaned back to the museum by the Louvre, they are here poignantly depicted in their original environment. Produced using only natural light with a long exposure and untouched by digital alteration, Höfer’s photographs couple a rare intimacy with monumentality of scale.
“Candida Höfer: Villa Borghese” runs through September 19th at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London.
Candida Höfer: Villa Borghese Roma series, 2012
How, when and why did you decide to work in photography?
For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by photography. Growing up I used to play with my parents’ cameras a lot and at some point I decided to study fashion photography – I don’t think I ever considered anything else.
What influences your work?
I think it is all about the places I visit and the people I meet.
How do you approach your work – how and why do you choose your subjects?
Photography enables me to discover and learn about others and myself. Nature, the people around me and my travels are my main inspiration. I look for natural beauty, innocence and personality. I love it when someone is not fussed and has an interesting personality that shows in the pictures.
Being a young photographer in our times can be pretty hard. What do you think is most important in tracing the right path?
To create what you believe in. I also think it’s really important to discuss your work with others – friends, colleagues, people in the industry – in order to get lots of feedback.
What are you doing when you are not shooting? What excites you at the moment?
I enjoy travelling, cycling around, meeting up with friends, watching films and cooking a lot.
Lately I’ve been meeting a lot of new faces and it is great to see these young girls’ enthusiasm. There is so much talent around!
A first glance at these photographs shot by Aaron Rose in his early 20s, might suggest a satirical collage operation – a sort of a mise-en-scene of slightly repulsive and unbearably raw parts of humanity. Yet, these are documentary, rather than staged, photographs, taken by Rose in the 1960s in an attempt to capture Coney Island’s anatomy. Seizing upon technological development, Rose used chromogenic colour film and increased the grain and speed of the film to secretly capture his subjects. An anthropological inquiry into Coney Island’s melting pot, these images are more striking and unusual than any freak show imagery could have been. Fifty years after they were realized, Rose’s Coney Island photographs are shown to the public for the very first time at the Museum of the City of New York. Running until August 3rd 2014, “In a World of Their Own: Coney Island Photographs by Aaron Rose, 1961-1963” captures the essence of universally painful summer life in the city.
Aaron Rose – Images courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York
Jessica Backhaus was born in Cuxhaven, Germany, in 1970 and grew up in an artistic family. At the age of sixteen, she moved to Paris, where she later studied photography and visual communications, and where she met Gisèle Freund in 1992, who became her mentor. In 1995 her passion for photography drew her to New York, where she assisted photographers, pursued her own projects and lived until 2009.
Regarded as one of the most distinguished voices in contemporary photography in Germany today, Jessica Backhaus has shown her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions, published different books and is featured in numerous prominent art collections. Presented here is a series of images from her project “Jesus and the Cherries”, published in 2005, documenting everyday life in the Polish province of Pomosrskie, where the artists has spent a total of three and a half years portraying the residents of Netno town.
She shows people in their apartments, at work, and in the untouched Polish landscape. With a sure eye and an unusual colour language, she points out important but easily overlooked details: plastic flowers and crocheted pillowcases, images of saints and lace doilies, and cherries preserved in mason jars. The pictures are neither intrusive nor tactless; she encounters people with dignity and full of admiration for the way of life of Poland’s rural population. The intimate character of the photos suggests a special relationship to the subject: we feel the warmth, cordiality, and authenticity with which Backhaus was received in Poland. Jessica Backhaus thus tells a tale of traditional ways of life that may already belong to the past.
Marie Rime is a young Swiss photographer (class of 1989), studying at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL). This year, her work was shown at Hyères Photography Festival, where she won the Public Prize for her two projects: Armures and Pharma, characterized by high-colored geometries and strict compositions.
Armures is a series about women dressed in costumes fashioned from everyday objects. These portraits are the starting point of a reflexion about the relationship between power, war and ornament. These women lose their identity and become a support for their clothing. In Pharma, Rime questions an industry which is very much talked about in Switzerland: the pharmaceutical industry. Here, she zoomes in pharmaceutics packagings, that she chooses to photograph against a colored background, for a result which recalls minimalist painting, questioning the notion of a too-obvious beauty.
Her work has been exhibited in 2013 as part of the ECAL photography show at Galerie Azzedine Alaïa, Paris and Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milano as well as in the context of the prize Vfg Nachwuchsfördepreis at Galerie Oslo 8, Basel, Switzerland.
