Photography Collection

Jodi Cobb has spent three decades as a staff photographer with National Geographic magazine and has worked in more than 60 countries. She was the first photographer to document the hidden lives of the women of Saudi Arabia, but she is perhaps best known for her book Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won the American Society of Media Photographers Outstanding Achievement Award. In this presentation, Cobb retraces her career, including the project “The Enigma of Beauty,” an exploration through 10 countries on six continents to investigate cultural notions of beauty and the science behind sexual attraction. Tickets for this event will be released online on Wednesday, February 1, at 12 noon and Thursday, February 2, at 9:30am. Once tickets are released, you may register by clicking here. Each person is limited to two tickets.

Please note that lectures tend to fill up quickly. Don’t be discouraged if you are unable to get tickets through the online ticketing system. The standby list for each lecture begins at 5pm on the day of the event in person at the Photography Space. About 10 minutes prior to the start of the lecture, Annenberg Space for Photography releases any seats that have not been claimed by ticket-holders to standby guests. Out of respect to the speaker and the other guests, late arrivals to the lecture are discouraged. The lecture was originally scheduled to run during the exhibition Beauty Culture, but was rescheduled due to technical difficulties.  The guests who were confirmed to attend the original postponed lecture were invited to register for this presentation in advance.  As many of them have reconfirmed to see Jodi Cobb, there are limited remaining tickets available for this Thursday’s IRIS Nights presentation.

Inside Closed Worlds – An Evening with Jodi Cobb

Thursday, February 9, 6:30-8:00pm

Annenberg Space for Photography

Century Park 2000 Avenue of the Stars, #10

Los Angeles

Andreas Gursky, Jumeirah Palm, 2008, Colour coupler print in artist's frame, Diasec face-mounted.250 x 170 cm (98 3/8 x 66 7/8 in).Signed 'Andreas Gursky' on a gallery label attached to the reverse. Edition of 6.

Philips de Pury, London is going to auction one of the famous works by Andreas Gursky: Jumeirah Palm. The huge c-print has been created in 2008 and shows an artificial archipelago created using land reclamation by Nakheel, a company owned by the Dubai government in United Arab Emirates. It is one of three islands called the Palm Islands, which extend into the Persian Gulf, increasing Dubai’s shoreline by a total of 320 miles. The Palm Jumeirah is the smallest and the original of three Palm Islands (Palm Jumeirah, Palm Jebel Ali and Palm Deira) under development by Nakheel. It is located on the Jumeirah coastal area of the Emirate of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Jumeirah is in the shape of a palm tree. It consists of a trunk, a crown with 16 fronds, and a surrounding crescent island that forms a 6.8 miles long breakwater. The island is 3.1 by 3.1 miles and its total area is larger than 800 football pitches. The crown is connected to the mainland by a 300-metre (980 ft) bridge and the crescent is connected to the top of the palm by a subsea tunnel.

Jumeirah Palm is an important example of Andreas Gursky’s recent body of work focusing on large-scale building projects in the Middle East. It epitomizes Gursky’s fundamental theme – the documentation of the various structures and arenas which human beings have shaped for themselves to live within and amongst. On closer inspection of Jumeirah Palm, one can see this in full effect: the rows of houses and holiday resorts seem to endlessly mirror each other along the artificial beaches. The human species have continually evolved and battled the unpredictability or intransigence of nature by imposing structure and form both physically and theoretically. Gursky documents how deeply economic forms of organization have taken root, right into the fleeting micro worlds of human survival.

“However fruitful Gursky’s experiments with abstract visual forms may have been for the overall development of his oeuvre, there is no mistaking his lofty ambitions and the ethics behind his goal, which is directed to ‘the human species.’ His singular achievement consists in bringing together abstraction and representation on a metaphorical level. He manages to capture itinerant parts of the world that at first sight seem to have cohesion, but which from his perspective are ‘pieces in the puzzle’ that interact when faced with the totality of the world.” (From Andreas Gursky Werke–Works 80-0, exh. cat., Kunstmuseen Krefeld 2008, p. 31)

The estimate of the photograph is $628,490 – 942,734.  The owner is a private collector in Belgium who acquired the artwork at the gallery Sprüth Magers, Berlin.

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

16 February, 7:00 pm

Phillips de Pury & Company

Howick Place London

Phillips de Pury & Company  has become the London market leader in the sale of photographs following the results of the last auction in November 2011, which achieved $2,620,185; selling 74% by lot and 86% by value. The photographs department in London maintains its position as a leader across the European market. It has achieved top prices at auction with works by photographers such as Irving Penn, Peter Lindbergh, Vik Muniz, and Hiroshi Sugimoto  in its most recent sale last year. The next London auction on 17 May will feature diverse property spanning most of the 20th and 21st centuries and will continue to offer photographs available on the market. Phillips de Pury will also host an event with photographer and film director Jim Lee to coincide with the opening of the photographs exhibition ahead of the May auction.

Araminta de Clermont, Life After. The Twins: Bless and Kojak

Worldwide, prisons are ‘home’ to more than 9 million people, and their numbers will only increase over the coming decades. But what do our various societies seek to accomplish by locking up such massive numbers of offenders? The Dutch Noorderlicht Photogallery presents photographs dealing with life behind bars. For this exhibition, the guest curators Hester Keijser and Pete Brook have selected artworks by eleven women photographers, most of which have never before been shown in Europe. As a background for the exhibition, Noorderlicht is publishing a newspaper with articles, interviews, and extra photo material. Andrea Stultiens will conduct the opening.

Cruel and Unusual looks at how the prison system is presented in images, and how these images are created, distributed, and consumed. How do citizens – tax payers and empathetic humans – come to an understanding of life in prisons based on the information – politicized or not – which they receive? Cruel and Unusual takes a startling and sometimes disconcerting look behind various prison walls around the world. Each photographer confronts her viewers in her own way with the question how current practices of mass incarceration reflect our changing sense of decency and justice.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

The title of the exhibition refers to the English Bill of Rights from 1689 and the Eighth Amendment to the American Constitution, which stipulates that citizens must not be subject to ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ But when is punishment cruel and unusual? To assist in the public discussion of this issue, photography helps by providing insight into the various facets play a role in the question.

Participating photographers

The photographers selected are Araminta de Clermont, Amy Elkins, Alyse Emdur, Christiane Feser, Brenda-Ann Kenneally, Jane Lindsay, Deborah Luster, Nathalie Mohadjer, Yana Payusova, Lizzie Sadin, and Lori Waselchuk. Each uses his/her own strategies, materials, and techniques. Given the extent of access to prisons, they work with amateur photography, alternative processes, texts, painted images, digital manipulation, or traditional black-and-white  documentary photography. Much of the work is being shown in The Netherlands and Europe for the first time.

Deborah Luster, One big self: Prisoners of Louisiana.

Pete Brook

Pete Brook is a freelance writer who focuses on the politics of media, visual culture, and social justice issues, to the extent that they relate to photography and photojournalism. He publishes the results of his research on the widely-read blog Prison Photography. He recently made a crowd-funded round trip through the United   States, Prison Photography on the Road. The outcome of that road trip is to be seen in this exhibition.

Hester Keijser

Hester Keijser is a freelance curator specializing in photography from and about the Middle East. She is presently working as the in-house programmer for The Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai. She also writes the stimulating and influential photography blog mrs.deane.

Catalogue

Cruel and Unusual is accompanied by a unique catalogue in the form of a newspaper. In addition to visual material from the main exhibition, the publication includes articles, blogs, interviews, sketches, and supplemental material from other photographers whom Pete Brook has encountered during Prison Photography on the Road.

Opening and lecture

Andrea Stultiens (www.andreastultiens.nl) will be responsible for the opening of the exhibition on 17 February, at 5:00 p.m. On 18 February, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. the guest curator Pete Brook will present a lecture on his road trip. In it he will also discuss the roles and responsibilities of bloggers in the light of the decline of print media.

Opening hours

Cruel and Unusual

Noorderlicht Photogallery

Akerkhof 12

Groningen, Netherlands

18 February – 1 April

Open Wed – Sun, noon to 6:00 p.m.

Admission free

Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1944, lithograph, printed 1981. 36 x 25 3/4 in., edition 305/350.

Sale 20091, Period Art & Design featuring Post War & Contemporary Art, 22 Jan 2012 California, Los Angeles

1. George Hurrell, Gary Cooper (Portfolio I), 1937    $875

2. George Hurrell, Loretta Young & Tyrone Power, from Love is News (Portfolio I), 1937    $875

3. George Hurrell , Bette Davis, Posing for YOU Magazine in a new hairstyle (Portfolio I), 1939    $875

4. George Hurrell, Selected Portraits from Portfolios I and III, 1932-41    $875

5. George Hurrell, Selected Portraits from Portfolio III, 1937-39    $1000

6. George Hurrell, Selected Portraits from Portfolios II and III, 1931-39    $1,125

7. Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1944, Lithograph    $3,750

8. Georg Gerster, Three Landscape Scenes, 1970s, Cibachrome Prints    $313

9. Robert Glenn Ketchum, Gambel Oak, Mesa Verde; First Light, 1977, 1978,  two cibachrome prints    $375

10. Robert Glenn Ketchum, Jedediah, After the Rain; Transition, 1978, 1980, two cibachrome prints    $525

11. Alex S. MacLean, Untitled #1251.32 (Fall Foliage); Untitled #540.14 (Fall Foliage with Two Lakes), late 1970s/early 1980s. Two cibachrome prints.    $313

12. Alex S. MacLean, Untitled (Aerial Landscape Scenes), late 1970s/early 1980s. Four cibachrome prints.    $438

13. Alex S. MacLean, Untitled (Aerial Landscape Scenes), late 1970s/early 1980s. Four cibachrome prints.    $375

14. Alex S. MacLean, Untitled (Aerial Landscape Scenes: #1080.21; #1336.23; #806.17), late 1970s/early 1980s. Three cibachrome prints.    $313

Prices include buyers premium.

Video of the Saatchi Gallery Talk:

New Directions in Contemporary Photography
Charlotte Cotton, Anne Hardy, Clarisse D’Arcimoles and Aaron Schuman in conversation
7.30pm, Monday 17 January 2011

One of the great paradigm shifts in contemporary art over the past 20 years has been the movement of photography into the realm of fine art. The critical and commercial success of artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans, Thomas Struth, and Andreas Gursky, who are represented by contemporary art galleries, and the appointment of photography curators to top public galleries such as Tate Modern and Guggenheim has ensured that the medium is increasingly regarded as a vital part of contemporary artistic practice. With digital techniques of manipulation becoming more and more advanced, photography stands to continually develop and change as a tool for artists.

Given that the first photograph was produced in 1826, why did it take so long for photography to be accepted by the art world? How reliable is a photograph as evidence of the real world? What makes a documentary photograph different from a ‘fine art’ photograph? How will the increasing impact of digital manipulation impact upon the medium? What might the future developments in photography be?

These are some of the questions that curator Charlotte Cotton and photographers Anne Hardy, Clarisse D’Arcimoles, and Aaron Schuman will discuss as they explore the most pressing questions regarding photography today.

Speakers:

Aaron Schuman
Aaron Schuman is a photographer, editor, writer, and curator. He has exhibited his photographic work internationally, and has contributed photography, articles, essays, and interviews to numerous magazines and newspapers. He was the curator of ‘Whatever Was Splendid: New American Photographs,’ one of the principal exhibitions at the 2010 FotoFest Biennial. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton and the Arts University College at Bournemouth, and is the founder, director, and editor of the online photography journal, SeeSaw Magazine.

Charlotte Cotton
Charlotte is Creative Director at the National Media Museum, Bradford. Before that she was Head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), a Curator of Photography at the V&A for 12 years and then Head of Programming at The Photographers’ Gallery in London.

Clarisse D’Arcimoles
Clarisse D’Arcimoles is a French emerging photographer and installation artist currently based in London. After graduating from Set Design for Performance at Central Saint Martin’s, she began a Postgraduate course in Photography. During this period she started focusing on performance photography staged specifically for the camera, and exploring ways of documentation of performance art works. Her work is featured in Newspeak: British Art Now at the Saatchi Gallery.

Anne Hardy
Anne Hardy’s photographs depict fictional spaces which have both a magical and naturalistic quality. Constructed within the studio using a range of materials, from disintegrating found objects to natural forms, these spaces uncover the uneasy relationship between the natural and artificial. Anne has shown her work in many solo and group shows around the world, including the Saatchi Gallery’s current exhibition Newspeak: British Art Now. She lives and works in London.

Gilbert & George, Bloody Life No. 13 , 1975, signed, titled and dated, each: 23¾ x 19¾ in., overall: 98 7/8 x 83 in.

Christie’s London is going to sell three very valuable photographs during their auction of post-war and contemporary art. The most valuable among those artworks according to estimates of the auction house is Bloody Life by Gilbert & George which consists of 16 panels and had been created in 1975. The owner is a European private collector who acquired in at Galleria Lucio Amelio in Naples, Italy.

Bathed in a radiant glow of red light, Gilbert & George’s Bloody Life No. 13 is one of the largest works from what is widely regarded as one of the most important series of their career to date. Acquired directly from their debut exhibition of the series at the Galleria Lucio Amelio in Naples in 1975, this work has remained in the same private collection for the past four decades. The 16 panels are photographs which had been hand-colored. The estimate is $1,090,600 – $1,558,000.

Andreas Gursky, Pyongyang II, 2007, chromogenic coupler print face-mounted to Plexiglas in artist's frame, in two parts, each (overall): 81 3/8x 101¾ in.. Edition 6/6.

The second artwork is Pyongyang II, which consists of two c-prints by Andreas Gursky. The present owner has acquired it from the gallery Sprüth Magers, Cologne. The estimate is $1,090,600 – $1,402,200. In Pyongyang II, Gursky has captured the highly choreographed performances marking the official start of the Arirang Festival in Pyongyang each spring. Held once a year to celebrate the birthday of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung, the Arirang Festival is celebrated with tightly choreographed performances and mass games, including a throng of more than 50,000 people. These events take place against a backdrop of 30,000 school children that each flips a series of colored cards in perfect unison to produce a myriad of changing images. Gursky illuminates the moment that these giant images rotate from doves of peace to the guns of war, the hands of thousands of individuals undertaking this monumental task.

Thomas Struth, Museo del Prado 6, 2007, cibachrome print in artist's frame, 69 7/8 x 85 3/8 in., signed, titled, numbered and dated. Edition 8/10.

The third photograph is Museo del Prado 6 by Thomas Struth. It is a cibachrome print owned by a Spanish private collector who acquired it from the gallery Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich, Germany. In 2005, Thomas Struth was granted permission to turn one of the most famous viewing spaces, the Museo del Prado, the renowned museum in Madrid, into a form of studio. Given the chance to photograph the crowds while they were viewing Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece Las Meninas, which he had first seen years earlier and which had long fascinated him, Struth arranged twenty flashbulbs in the ceiling space of the gallery while he himself moved around within the crowd with a large format camera mounted on a wheeled tripod, taking images of the hustle and bustle of people milling in front of Las Meninas and some of the other paintings by Velázquez.

Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction

Christie’s

8 King Street, St. James’s

London

14 February, 7 pm

Viewing Times

11 February, 12 pm – 5 pm

12 February, 12 pm – 5 pm

13 February,  9 am – 7:30 pm

14 February, 9 am – 4 pm

Andreas Gursky, James Bond Island I, c-print in artist's frame, signed on a label affixed to the reverse, 120 7/8 by 87 7/8 in., Executed in 2007, edition 5/6.

A famous photograph by Andreas Gursky is going to be auctioned at Sotheby’s London: James Bond Island I. The German photographer produced the image in 2007. The estimate is $467,970 – 623,960. The owner of the image is a European collector who acquired the artwork from White Cube, London. Auction prices for photographs by Andreas Gursky have risen between 2010 and 2011 at a rate of 34 percent according to artprice.com. Due to the financial crisis the prices dropped dramatically between 2009 and 2010.

Contemporary Art Evening Auction

15 February, 7 pm

Sotheby’s London

34-35 New Bond Street

Photographer Claudia Kunin is talking about her work at Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. She launched her career in 1976 when she was first published in Rolling Stone magazine. She pursued commercial photography for the next 30 years with intermittent shows of her fine art, which is now her primary artistic pursuit. Her bodies of work include Revenant, 3D Ghost Stories,  3D Holy Ghost Stories and 3D Family Ghost Stories.  She has shown her work all over the world including New York City, Tokyo, Paris, and Los Angeles.

Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Eyemazing, Camera Work, Focus and most recently in B&W + Color magazines. She was the recipient of two awards in the 2010 Prix de la Photographie Paris for her fine art.  Kunin’s work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Museum of Photographic Arts.  Her archive will be housed in the Smithsonian Institute of American History’s photography collection.

In her lecture, Kunin will discuss addressing visual concepts of ghosts and memory. She will also present images from her four bodies of work, as well as some of her recent animations work. Tickets for this event will be released online on Wednesday, January 25 at 12 noon and Thursday, January 26 at 9:30am. Once tickets are released, you may register by clicking here. Each person is limited to two tickets.

Please note that our lectures tend to fill up quickly. Don’t be discouraged if you are unable to get tickets through our online ticketing system. The standby list for each lecture begins at 5pm on the day of the event in person at the Photography Space. About 10 minutes prior to the start of the lecture, we release any seats that have not been claimed by ticket-holders to our standby guests. Out of respect to our speaker and the other guests, late arrivals to the lecture are discouraged.

Ghosts, Memories, and Mirrors

An Evening with Claudia Kunin

Thursday, February 2, 6:30-8:00pm

Annenberg Space for Photography

Century Park 2000 Avenue of the Stars, #10

Los Angeles

Swann Galleries’ December 13 auction of Important Photobooks & Photographs established auction records for a number of early photographic albums and for scarce books and portfolios that seldom appear at auction. A Mongolian Expedition portfolio set a record for an album of vernacular photography.That album, a Record of Photographs Taken by Eric Sinclaire Purdon, 1936, contained more than 40 pages of trimmed contact strips depicting the landscape and people of Mongolia, and brought $15,600* against a pre-sale estimate of $900 to $1,200.

The sale’s top two lots were also albums, and brought six figures each. Andrew J. Russell’s United States Military Rail Road Photographic Album, with 107 albumen prints of the railroads, battlefields and landscapes of the Civil War, 1863-64, brought a record $156,000, and Edwin Hale Lincoln’s self-published Wild Flowers of New England Photographed from Nature, with 400 photographic plates in eight volumes, one of only perhaps 50 copies, Massachusetts, 1910-14, sold for a record $108,000.

Making their auction debuts were Aaron Siskind’s Viterbo Broom, portfolio containing 18 abstract photographs, 1967, and with an inscription by Siskind, $48,000, and Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s Fotografias, deluxe edition, signed by Bravo, with two (of three) silver prints, Mexico, 1945, $43,200. Other featured albums and books in the sale included an album containing 23 original photographs of Kairouan, Tunisia by Consuelo Kanaga, silver prints, 1928, $11,400; Jack Smith’s gender-bending The Beautiful Book, first edition, one of approximately 60 copies, New York, 1959, $30,000; Edward Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations, one of 400 numbered copies, California, 1963, $9,000; and William Eggleston’s 2 ¼, one of 50 signed and numbered copies issued with a photograph, Santa Fe, 1999, $8,400.

The top-selling individual photograph was Peter Beard’s Fayel Tall / El Molo Bay, Lake Rudolf, a mixed media silver print with applied blood and feather, 1987, printed 1997, which saw much international interest and sold for $36,000. Other highlights included Elliott Erwitt’s Provence, silver print, 1955, printed 2011, which achieved a record $14,400; Ormond Gigli’s fashion shot Girls In the Windows, N.Y.C., chromogenic print, 1960, printed 1990s, $11,400; Sally Mann’s Emmet, Jessie and Virginia, silver print, 1989, $9,000; Raghubir Singh, Muslim School Girls Returning Home, Tirurangadi, Kerala, and Untitled (man farming), $8,400 for the pair; Horst P. Horst’s Mainbocher Corset, Paris, silver print, 1937, printed 1990s; and Berenice Abbott’s Seventh Avenue Looking South from 35th Street, silver print, 1935, $6,960.       

*All prices include buyer’s premium.

Thomas Ruff, jpeg la01

The years of rising prices are over concerning photographs by Thomas Ruff. Since 2008 prices dropped despite more and more images sold. During the years before the price growth rate of auction results was 22 to 57 percent but the price index dropped by a third from 2008 to 2011 according to artprice.com. The annual auction turnover in 2010 was $1.4 million USD in 2010 – almost a third of the sum from 2006. During that year 118 photographs had been sold; this is almost double the number as at the end of 2010. The most valuable image auctioned in 2011 was Substrat 27 III, a chromogenic print from 2005 which had been sold at Christie’s, London, for $77421.

Thomas Ruff, one of six children, was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach in the Black Forest, Germany. In the summer of 1974 Ruff acquired his first camera and after attending an evening class in the basic techniques of photography he started to experiment, taking shots similar to those he had seen in many amateur photography magazines. During his studies in Düsseldorf and inspired by the lectures of Benjamin HD Buchloh, Ruff developed his method of conceptual serial photography. Ruff began photographing landscapes, but while he was still a student he transitioned to the interiors of German living quarters, with typical features of the 1950s to 1970s. This was followed by similar views of buildings and portraits of friends and acquaintances from the Düsseldorf art and music scene, initially in small formats.

Ruff studied photography from 1977 to 1985 with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf Art Academy), where fellow students included the photographers Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth, Angelika Wengler, and Petra Wunderlich. In 1982, he spent six months at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 1993 he was a scholar at Villa Massimo in Rome. Commenting on his influences, Ruff said, “My teacher Bernd Becher, showed us photographs by Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz, and the new American colour photographers.” From 2000 to 2005 Ruff taught Photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Irving Penn, Woman in Moroccan Palace (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Marrakech, 1951

The 2011 Top 10 fashion photographers – from an auction revenue perspective – includes the classic trio Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Peter Lindbergh … with Helmut Newton not far behind. With hindsight, 2004 was a pivotal year for photography with the death of Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton and, at the same time, an acceleration of auction prices for the entire Contemporary photography segment (post-1950) for which fashion has been a recurrent theme.

1. Irving Penn  $409 740 Woman in Moroccan Palace… 11/12/2011 (Christie’s Paris)

2. Richard Avedon  $400 000 Marilyn Monroe, New York City, May 6 04/08/2011 (Christie’s NY)

3. Irving Penn  $310 000 Black and White Vogue Cover… 10/04/2011 (Phillips de Pury & Co NY)

4. Irving Penn  $300 476 Harlequin Dress 11/12/2011 (Christie’s Paris)

5. Richard Avedon  $260 000 Avedon/Paris 04/06/2011 (Sotheby’s NY)

6. Peter Lindbergh  $152 038 Amber Valletta, New York 11/03/2011 (Phillips de Pury & Co London)

7. Irving Penn $140 000 Black and White Vogue Cover… 04/08/2011 (Christie’s NY)

8. Irving Penn  $110 000 Mermaid Dress (Rochas)… 04/08/2011 (Christie’s NY)

9. Irving Penn  $110 000 Harlequin Dress 05/02/2011 (Heritage Auctions DALLAS TX)

10. Richard Avedon  $80 000 Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent… 10/04/2011 (Phillips de Pury & Co NY)

Irving Penn Irving Penn emerged as one of the best fashion photographers ever since his first cover for American Vogue in 1943. He subsequently created 65 covers for the magazine in a career spanning 66 years that revolutionised fashion photography. His favourite model was Lisa Fonssagrives, who became his wife in 1950. A veritable muse for Penn, she became the subject of his most elegant and most sought-after photos from the 1950s. She was also the subject of Penn’s latest auction record this year in Woman in Moroccan Palace (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn) which fetched €300,000 ($409,000) on 11 December 2011 at Christie’s Paris). The same day at the same sale, a photo of Lisa wearing an astonishing black and white check dress (Harlequin Dress) fetched €220,000 ($300,000). Penn’s first six-figure auction results were recorded in 2005. Since then, sales of his work generate several million dollars each year (2 to 4 million between 2005 and 2008) compared with an annual average of $100,000 at the end of the 1990s. With more than half of the 2011 Top 10 results occupied by Irvin Penn, he was clearly the most sought-after fashion photographer this year.

Richard Avedon, Marilyn Monroe, New York City, 1957, 40 1/6x30 1/6 in.. Gelatin silver print, Printed 1980

Richard Avedon

Avedon’s curriculum vitae is impressive after spending twenty year working for Harper’s Bazaar (mostly as photographic director), twenty-five years creating Vogue covers and twelve years at the New Yorker. Richard Avedon had a major impact on fashion photography by injecting strong doses of art and emotion into his work. After his death in 2004, collectors started buying his works with such alacrity that in 2005 his auction revenue was ten times the previous year’s total. His prices shot up nearly 89% between 2004 and 2011. The summit was in 2010 with a record volume of transactions generating close to $7m in auction revenue versus a previous annual record of $2.5m. This week’s Top 10 has Richard Avedon in second position for 2011 on the back of his famous portrait of a terribly melancholic Marilyn Monroe. The photo, taken in 1957, doubled its low estimate fetching $400,000 on 8 April 2011 at Christie’s NY. Despite having been developed much later (1980, edition of 10), this was a record result for a Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn Monroe, New York City, May 6). However this was not his annual record (The Beatles Portfolio – $600,000 on 4 October 2011 at Phillips de Pury & Company) nor his absolute record (Dovima with elephants, 20 November 2010 – €700,000 [$945,000] at Christie’s Paris).

Peter Lindbergh

Prices are rising spectacularly for Peter Lindbergh whose price index is up 116% over the last six years (2004-2011). Compared to Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton or Irvin Penn, his best photos are relatively affordable since he generated his first six-figure result in 2004 (Keith Richards, Man of the Year, New York, $100,000, Phillips de Pury & Company). His auction record is recent (3 November 2011) for an angel in New York City, printed in 230cm x 150cm format (one copy only) and previously exposed at the Bunkamura Museum of Art in Tokyo (1996). Amber Valletta, New York, USA fetched £95,000 ($152,000) at Phillips de Pury & Company. Other prints of the same work exist in fifty centimetre formats for between $10,000 and 20,000 at auction, but considering their rarity (about one a year at auction) the prices could well climb.

Helmut Newton

His early photos taken in the 1930 when he was an adolescent already show the seeds of the main themes of his later work – fashion, women and portraits. Helmut Newton gained public recognition after WWII by publishing in Playboy and various fashion magazines. In the 1970s his clever mix of eroticism and voyeurism, of power and domination, of seduction and deliberate bad taste rapidly contributed to his renown. At auction, he crossed the $10,000 threshold in 1992 and the $100,000 threshold in 2002 with his most famous diptych, Sie Kommen, Paris (Naked and Dressed), depicting four dressed models in one shot and naked, in the same poses, in the second. In 2002, the diptych work fetched $160,000 at Sotheby’s (17 April, NY). Six years later, it generated the artist’s record of $550,000 (Christie’s NY on 16 December 2008). However, in 2011 he appears at the bottom of the Top 10 rather than at its top with a best result of just $55,000 for his Tied up torso, Ramatuelle, at Christie’s Paris on 12 November (10 prints, 1980). Like Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton died in 2004. Since then, his price index has climbed a modest 35% compared with Avedon’s 89% progression on the back of a substantially more limited volume of works in circulation. Indeed, in photography, rarity is indeed a primary factor in valuations (number of original prints / number of subsequent prints, etc.).

© artprice.com

Andreas Gursky, Rhein II, 1999, C-print mounted to plexiglass in artist's frame, 81 x 140 inches

1. Andreas Gursky, Rhein II (1999), $4,338,500, November 8, 2011, Christie’s New York.

2.  Cindy Sherman, Untitled #96 (1981), $3,890,500, May 2011, Christie’s New York.

3. Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001), $3,346,456, February 2007, Sotheby’s London auction. A second print of 99 Cent II Diptychon sold for $2.48  million in November 2006 at a New York gallery, and a third print sold for $2.25 million at Sotheby’s in May 2006.

4. Edward Steichen, The Pond-Moonlight (1904), $2,928,000, February 2006, Sotheby’s New York auction.

5. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #153 (1985), $2,700,000, November 2010, Phillips de Pury & Co. New York.

6. Unknown photographer, Billy the Kid (1879–80), tintype portrait, $2,300,000, June 2011, Brian Lebel’s Old West Show & Auction.

7. Dmitry Medvedev, Tobolsk Kremlin (2009), $1,750,000, January 2010, Christmas Yarmarka, Saint Petersburg.

8. Edward Weston, Nude (1925), $1,609,000, April 2008, Sotheby’s New York auction.

9. Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe (Hands) (1919), $1,470,000, February 2006, Sotheby’s New York auction.

10. Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe Nude (1919), $1,360,000, February 2006, Sotheby’s New York auction.

11. Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) (1989),[10] $1,248,000, November 2005, Christie’s New York auction.

12. Richard Avedon, Dovima with elephants (1955), $1,151,976, November 2010, Christie’s Paris auction.

13. Edward Weston, Nautilus (1927), $1,082,500, April 2010, Sotheby’s New York auction.

14. Peter Lik, One (2010), $1,000,000, December 2010, Anonymous Collector

15. Eugène Atget, Joueur d’Orgue, (1898–1899), $686,500, April 2010, Christie’s New York auction.

16. Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol (1987), $643,200, October 17, 2006, Christie’s New York auction.

17. Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1948), [20] $609,600, 2006, Sotheby’s New York auction.

The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) will hold the 32nd edition of The AIPAD Photography Show New York,, March 29 – April 1, 2012, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. More than 70 photography galleries will present a wide range of artworks, including contemporary, modern, and 19th-century photographs, as well as photo-based art, video, and new media. The Show will open with a Gala Preview on March 28, 2012, to benefit InMotion, which provides free legal services to low-income women.

AIPAD 2012 will present four new member exhibitors: David Zwirner, New York; Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York; Paul Cava Fine Art Photographs, Bala Cynwyd, PA; and 798 Photo Gallery, Beijing.

Exhibitors

In addition to galleries from New York City and across the United States, a number of international galleries will be featured from Germany, Great Britain, Argentina, Japan, and China. An exhibitor list is available at aipad.com/photoshow.

Exhibition Highlights

The AIPAD Photography Show New York will offer artworks from established and emerging contemporary artists to modern and 19th-century masters. Among the highlights will be a selection of extraordinary portraits. Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, will show Linda McCartney’s photographs of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. One of Bert Stern’s contact sheet images of Marilyn Monroe from her last sitting in 1962, which she crossed off, will be on view at Staley-Wise Gallery, New York. Flip Schulke’s mural-sized silver gelatin print of Muhammad Ali jumping out of a hotel pool in Miami Beach from 1961 will be exhibited at Keith de Lellis Gallery, New York. The image was first published that year in Life magazine. Portraits of pioneer photographers will be shown at Charles Schwartz Ltd., New York, including a rare self-portrait by Herbert George Ponting from 1912 on the ill-fated expedition of Robert Falcon Scott to Antarctica.

Tam Tran is known for her self-portraits with provocative titles such as My Call to Arms, Retro Bitch, I Forgot Pants, Strip Tease, and When Are We Leaving? Her photographs were seen at the Whitney Biennal last year; at age 23 she was the youngest artist in the exhibition. This fall, her work was included in the recent exhibition Portraiture Now, Asian American Portraits of Encounter at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Her image entitled Youniverse will be shown by Gary Edwards Gallery, Washington, DC. Kelli Connell creates portraits that appear to document a relationship between two women, caught up in everyday moments of pleasure and reflection. Yet upon closer inspection, the viewer will notice that the subjects appear to the twins: in fact, Connell has seamlessly created a photograph with the same model portraying both roles. At the forefront of digital technologies for the past decade, Connell addresses complex issues of identity and visual rhetoric. Her work will be exhibited at Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.

Portraits of dolls by Fausta Facciponte will be on view at Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. In her series Sleepy Eyes, 2011, Facciponte explores the human qualities of reclaimed dolls from garage sales and online auctions. Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, will show new photo-based work by John Chamberlain. Created in 2010-11, Pictures is Chamberlain’s most candid, autobiographical, and intimate body of work to date. Departing from his sculptures in medium and imagery, these new works on canvas continue the artist’s powerful use of color and composition. Karen Knorr’s series, India Song, 2008-2010, depicts tigers and other wild animals lounging in exotic palaces, mansions, and mausoleums. The images reinvent the Panchatantra, an ancient Indian collection of animal fables, for the 21st century, blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion. Knorr was nominated for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Prints from India Song will be on view at Danziger Gallery, New York, along with work by Andy Warhol, Evelyn Hofer, and Hendrik Kerstens. Robert Burge/20th Century Photos, Ltd, New York, will show John Woolf’s new color panoramas of classical theater interiors.

Landscape photography will be on view at AIPAD. Mariana Cook, the last protégé of Ansel Adams, was at her home on Martha’s Vineyard on the day before Thanksgiving in 2002, when 56 cows strayed through a crumbling section of the stone wall she shares with her neighbor. Struck by the beauty of the wall, Cook spent eight years traveling to Peru, Great Britain, Ireland, the Mediterranean, New England, and Kentucky in pursuit of photographing dry stone walls. Her book Stone Walls: Personal Boundaries was published last fall, and Lee Marks Fine Art, Shelbyville, IN, will exhibit a number of gelatin silver prints, including Modern Wall in Spring, Froggatt, Derbyshire, England, 2004. A study of trees, c. 1910-20, by Maxfield Parrish will be on view at Paul Cava Fine Art Photographs, Bala Cynwyd, PA. Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York, will offer the diaristic photography of Elinor Carucci whose work can be found at The Museum of Modern Art and the International Center for Photography, New York. Gitterman Gallery, New York, will show the landscapes of Adam Bartos whose interest in 19th-century travel photography has taken him to Egypt, Kenya, and Mexico with a large format camera. Robert Mann Gallery, New York, will exhibit landscapes and interiors ranging from 1940s work by Ansel Adams and Fred Stein, as well as new work from Julie Blackmon and Jeff Brouws.

In late June of 1964, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing, kidnapped by Klu Klux Klansmen. One man was black; the other two were white. Their names were James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Bill Eppridge arrived shortly after their bodies were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam in Neshoba County on August 4, 1964. His portrait entitled Mrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney Funeral, Mississippi, 1964 will be on view at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe.

AIPAD 2012 Panel Discussions

An schedule of five panel discussions featuring curators, artists, dealers, and collectors will be held on Saturday, March 31, 2012, at the Park Avenue Armory Veteran’s Room. The panels are as follows:

10 a.m. | A Conversation with Rineka Dijkstra

Contemporary women photographers are being feted in a number of solo exhibitions at leading museums across the country this year. Among the most widely anticipated is a retrospective of the work of Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra. This interview with the internationally-recognized photographer will offer a rare opportunity to hear her inspirations and thoughts before her upcoming exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in June 2012.

12 p.m. | Curator’s Choice: Emerging Artists in Photography

Two major exhibitions in New York City during the run of The AIPAD Photography Show New York are of note: the Whitney Biennial 2012 at the Whitney Museum and Perspectives 2012 at the International Center for Photography. To explore emerging artists in these exhibitions as well as broader trends, this panel will feature top curators and artists discussing their perceptions about new photography and video, moderated by Steven Kasher, Steven Kasher Gallery.

2 p.m. | How to Collect Photographs: What Collectors Need to Know Now

What important artists are being talked about right now? What do collectors need to know? What art fairs should be on your calendar? How has the photography market changed in recent years? AIPAD dealers and seasoned collectors will offer tips for both first-time and experienced buyers.

4 p.m. | A Celebration of Diane Arbus and Francesca Woodman

To commemorate traveling retrospectives of Diane Arbus (organized by the Jeu de Paume, Paris) and Francesca Woodman (organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), leading experts, including AIPAD dealers, will talk about the importance of this these artists and their enduring legacies. Robert Klein, Robert Klein Gallery, will moderate the panel.

6 p.m. | Italian Contemporary Photography

During the run of The AIPAD Photography Show New York, an exhibition at Hunter Art Gallery Peripheral Visions: Italian Photography, 1950s – Present will showcase the work of Italian photographers who have explored unconventional images of Italy. Speakers will include Maria Antonella Pelizzari, exhibition curator and professor in the history of photography at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY; Sandra Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and other international scholars and artists.

Tickets are $10 per panel discussion. Seating is limited, and tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Show Information

The AIPAD Photography Show New York will run from Thursday, March 29 though Sunday, April 1, 2012, at the Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street in New York City. Show hours are as follows:

Thursday March 29 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Friday March 30 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Saturday March 31 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Sunday April 1 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Participating Galleries

798 Photo Gallery Beijing, China

A Gallery for Fine Photography New Orleans

Nailya Alexander Gallery New York

Amador Gallery New York

Joseph Bellows Gallery La Jolla

Bonni Benrubi Gallery, Inc. New York

Daniel Blau Photography Munich, Germany

Janet Borden, Inc. New York

Stephen Bulger Gallery Toronto

John Cleary Gallery Houston

Commerce Graphics Ltd, Inc. New York

Contemporary Works/Vintage Works Chalfont

Stephen Daiter Gallery Chicago

Danziger Gallery New York

Keith de Lellis Gallery New York

Catherine Edelman Gallery Chicago

Etherton Gallery Tucson

Galerie f5,6 Munich, Germany

Galerie Johannes Faber Vienna, Austria

Peter Fetterman Gallery Santa Monica

Fleischmann Vintage Works Zurich, Switzerland

Barry Friedman Ltd. New York

G. Gibson Gallery Seattle

Gitterman Gallery New York

HackelBury Fine Art Limited London

Michael Hoppen Gallery London

James Hyman Photography  London

Jackson Fine Art Atlanta

K. & J. Jacobson Great Bardfield, United Kingdom

Steven Kasher Gallery New York

Kicken Berlin Berlin, Germany

Robert Klein Gallery Boston

Alan Klotz Gallery New York

Robert Koch Gallery San Francisco

Kopeikin Gallery Los Angeles

Hans P. Kraus Jr. Inc. New York

Josef Lebovic Gallery Sydney

M+B Los Angeles

Lee Marks Fine Art Shelbyville

McNamara Gallery Photography Wanganui, New Zealand

Andrea Meislin Gallery New York

Laurence Miller Gallery New York

Yossi Milo Gallery New York

Monroe Gallery of Photography Santa

Robert Morat Galerie Hamburg, Germany

Scott Nichols Gallery San Francisco

Galerie Priska Pasquer Cologne, Germany

PDNB Gallery Dallas

Flo Peters Gallery Hamburg, Germany

Photo Gallery International Tokyo

Serge Plantureux Paris

Bernard Quaritch Ltd. London United

Yancey Richardson Gallery New York

Julie Saul Gallery New York

William L. Schaeffer/Photographs Chester

Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd. Santa Fe

Bruce Silverstein Gallery New York

Andrew Smith Gallery, Inc. Santa Fe

Joel Soroka Gallery Aspen

Staley+Wise Gallery New York

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, LLC New York

Throckmorton Fine Art, Inc. New York

VERVE Gallery of Photography Santa Fe

Vision Neil Folberg Gallery Jerusalem

Wach Gallery Avon Lake

Rick Wester Fine Art New York

The Weston Gallery, Inc. Carmel

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery New York

David Zwirner New York

The German photographer Andreas Mueller-Pohle has produced a video (23 minutes) in 1996 featuring Japanese Nobuyoshi Araki during a shooting at a love hotel in Tokyo. The gallery photo edition berlin offers a limited edition (99 + 4 AP) of this film. Andreas Mueller-Pohle presents the exhibition flow flow with videos, photographs and sound installations until 12 February.

Hannes Kilian, Pavillion de la Marine Marchande

In his work as a photojournalist, travel, and portrait photographer, as well as a photographer for the legendary Stuttgart Ballet, Hannes Kilian has uniquely combined documentary, the human element, and artistic validity. With intuition and precision, the technical and aesthetic possibilities of the photographic medium fully utilized, he recognized the expressive motif in the everyday and seemingly random aspects of life. In doing so, Kilian’s view is indeed subjective. Lighting, angle and image detail mirror his very personal awareness and perception, now and then featuring a turn to the unreal, such as in “Fresswelle” (1956), the panorama of the amply stocked buffet.  Over the course of several decades, his pictures tell of German history, life among ruins of war, new beginnings and an economic miracle, of high societies and the little people.

Hanes Kilian, Fort Hood - Texas 1963

In the waiting area of a train station: A group of people waiting sit under a mysteriously shimmering clock in a diffused semi-darkness; the shot is initially captured from the open newspaper in the foreground. However, the photographer’s real focus is on the man sitting behind them; his hands folded, and his face looking earnestly into the distance. On the left edge of the picture, a silhouetted black figure appears in front of a lighted display. Hannes Kilian loved the magic of the night, which changes people and in a unique way blends them into their environment.

His often subtle imagery, built on forms of tension and contrasts, finds its very characteristic shape in night photography. Light and dark unexpectedly come together, rhythmic or linear traces of light bring movement and depth of space, while black, as a compositional element, unfurls an independent power of expression.  At night, the reality of day inverses itself. Kilian discovers the elements of the fantastical and escalates them in a creative way, but without becoming picturesque; such as in the seemingly futuristic appearance of light in “Pavillon de la Marine Marchande” at the 1937 Paris World Fair, or in the ghostly passersby before the backdrop of glowing advertisements in “Munich” (1964).

Text plays a significant role in Hannes Kilian’s photographs in general, whether it is found in an intimate view of a person reading the newspaper by night, as a defining element in an urban street image, or as an irritant, a waking moment, overabundant with associations, that is first discerned through the camera in the moment of artistic discernment.  This night photography shows in particular, that Hannes Kilian was more than a chronicler.  He saw the larger connections, the feeling of life in his time, as well as the subtle irritations and inconsistencies; moments which others missed. (Susanne Schmid)

Hannes Kilian | Bei Nacht

21 January – 24 March

Johanna Breede

PHOTOKUNST

Fasanenstrasse 69 D

Berlin

Germany

At the same time the Haus der Geschichte, Baden-Württemberg presents the retrospective

HANNES KILIAN – Photographs

in the building at the Schlossplatz Stuttgart

Schlossplatz 2 | 70173 Stuttgart

12 February – 29 April 2012

Opening times
Daily (except Mondays) 11 am – 6 pm
Wednesday  11 am bis 8 pm
Closed Good Friday
Opened Easter Monday

Admission
Adult 4 Euro / discounted: 2 Euro
Families: 5 Euro, children and pupils free

Olaf Otto Becker: "River 1, 07/2007, Position 13, 69°40’53’’N, 49°54’06’’W, ALTITUDE 715M" aus der Serie "Above Zero" (2009)

Photography is currently going through a period of change. However, it is not just the digital revolution that is changing the way photos are taken and the technology that is used and broadening possibilities, the global data space itself has become a new resource. Despite all the digitalization, the method of producing a unique analogue photograph remains an option. Aesthetics and the way photos are ‘staged’ are changing. Migration and globalization are new themes. The ‘new photographers’ have a different perspective on the history of photography. They have new heroes; heroes that come from history and from other disciplines. They are no longer afraid of the aural and the sublime. And they are open to new forms of presentation, to installations, to a blend of media and materials. Photography, so it would seem, has at last arrived in the free arts.

‘The future does not belong to pure photography, but to the free arts,’ says Andreas Gursky, one of the »advistors« of the “State of the Art Photography” exhibition. The NRW-Forum Düsseldorf asked for photographers who are tipped to be the movers and the shakers in this field in the coming years. In an attempt to reflect this remit, each of the 40 artists/photographers who feature in this summary exhibition is represented by a collection of images or an installation. The photographers were proposed by Andreas Gursky, Thomas Weski, Klaus Biesenbach, Udo Kittelmann, FC Gundlach, Thomas Seelig, Andrea Holzherr, and Werner Lippert. They hail from America, Europe, and South Africa; other continents and cultural spaces will be addressed at a later date.

A tour of the 40 exhibits makes it clear, for example, that while photography is currently experiencing a renaissance of classical themes such as landscape or portrait photography, the objective and the focus have shifted. The landscape photographs of Alex Grein, for example, seem to continue in the tradition of Caspar David Friedrichs, but are, in fact, made up of numerous fragments of images that she found on the Internet, sections of pictures from satellite images, from Google Earth. Notwithstanding their technical creation, they hark back to an art form where it was permissible to submerge oneself in the image and the landscape. At the same time, they point to the fact that perception can be influenced by memories, ideas, and emotions. Although Asger Carlsen, like Alex Grein, draws on the digital in his work, his work merges human bodies to create inhuman forms, an approach that is more sculptural than photographic.

Maziar Moradi: Aus der Serie "1979" (2007)

Many approaches could be referred to as ‘academic’ or ‘scientific’, research into the traces of humanity, the biographies of young people, or brain imaging … these photographs are comparable with the results produced by a scientist or a researcher; they are of high documentary value, yet at the same time do not deny their aesthetic dimension. Sanna Kannisto’s work, for example, is based on biological studies; Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse investigate the high-rise residential building ‘Ponte City’, an icon of the Johannesburg skyline; Olaf Otto Becker focuses on the traces left on the landscape by human overpopulation.

What is striking is that the artists are turning away from emptiness and are allowing the sublime, the aural, to shine through, as is the case with Andreas Mühe’s photographs of Obersalzberg. In other words, photography has not just arrived in art. It has also obviously rediscovered itself.

In a unique co-operation between the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, the book ‘State of the Art Photography’ has been published by feymedia to coincide with the exhibition. In this book, six pages are dedicated to each of the 40 international artists and include biographies, bibliographies, and illustrations of their work. The 264-page book is an independent, multilingual hardcover publication aimed at people who want to know today what is going to be the next big thing in art and photography tomorrow.

The artists:

Peter Ainsworth, Olaf Otto Becker, Laura Bielau, Miriam Böhm, Elina Brotherus, Bianca Brunner, Stefan Burger, Asger Carlsen, Katalin Deér, Martin Denker, Jan Paul Evers, Daniel Gordon, Alexandra Grein, WassinkLundgren, Harry Gruyaert, Oliver Helbig, Ulrich Hensel, Stefan Hostettler, Pepa Hristova, Sanna Kannisto, Annette Kelm, Jeremy Kost, Mischa Kuball, Edgar Leciejewski, Tim Lee, Maziar Moradi, Armin Morbach, Andreas Mühe, Taiyo Onorato / Nico Krebs, Alex Prager, Rico Scagliola / Michael Meier, Anja Schori, Jeremy Shaw, Arne Schmitt, Jacob Aue Sobol, Kathrin Sonntag, Heidi Specker, Mikhael Subotzky / Patrick Waterhouse, Pinar Yolacan, Anna Vogel, and Moritz Wegwerth.

State of the Art Photography

Exhibition:

NRW-Forum Ehrenhof 2 Düsseldorf

4 February to 6 May 2012

Opening hours Tuesday – Sunday 11 am – 8 pm

Friday 11 am – 12 pm

Book

feymedia Verlag Düsseldorf, 200 pages, € 35,- www.feymedia.de

In this clip, Thomas Ruff speaks about his experience at the Düsseldorf Academy and the artists that have most inspired his work from August Sander, Walker Evans, and Joel Meyerowitz. He presents his first important body of work of enlarged portraits of his friends so the viewer understands he is looking at a photograph of the subject and not only the subject. Ruff explains how large scale photography has emancipated the medium on the contemporary art scene in the 1980’s. Ruff also speaks about his Architecture series when he starts using digital retouching, and expresses how objective photography is always subjective. Finally, he presents his Stars and newspaper collages series when for the first time in his career, he gives up authorship of the image and use appropriation.

The full version of this talk is available on vimeo and on our multimedia section, divided in four different clips.

Aperture and the photography department in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design presented this conversation between artist Thomas Ruff and writer, former picture editor, Philip Gefter, on February 12, 2010 at Aperture Gallery.

Thomas Ruff is among the most important international photographers to emerge in the last fifteen years, and one of the most enigmatic and prolific of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s former students, a group that includes Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer, and Axel Hutte.

In 2009, Aperture released the first monograph dedicated exclusively to the publication of Ruff’s remarkable series: JPEGS. In 2007, Ruff completed his monumental Jpegs series in which he explores the distribution and reception of images in the digital age. Starting with images he culls primarily from the Web, Ruff enlarges them to a gigantic scale, which exaggerates the pixel patterns until they become sublime geometric displays of color. Many of Ruff’s works in the series focus on idyllic, seemingly untouched landscapes, and conversely, scenes of war, and nature disturbed by human manipulation.

In this clip, Thomas Ruff speaks about his fascination for technology and the camera’s ability to record what the eye can’t see during the Gulf War in 1991. Using similar infrared cameras, Ruff “declared war to Düsseldorf” shooting in the streets of the city and in contrast with the technology of the camera, he superimposed the images in an analog way. Ruff also touches on his satirical photomontages of politicians. Finally, Ruff speaks about how he reinterpreted a major art genre, the nude, through a different and more honest vision by using images he found on the Web for X-rated videos. This series introduces his interest in appropriation of Internet images and in their pixels structure that he will further develop in his Jpegs series.

The full version of this talk is available on Vimeo and on our multimedia section, divided in four different clips.

Aperture and the photography department in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design presented this conversation between artist Thomas Ruff and writer, former picture editor, Philip Gefter, on February 12, 2010, at Aperture Gallery.

Thomas Ruff is among the most important international photographers to emerge in the last fifteen years, and one of the most enigmatic and prolific of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s former students, a group that includes Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer, and Axel Hutte.

In 2009, Aperture released the first monograph dedicated exclusively to the publication of Ruff’s remarkable series: JPEGS. In 2007, Ruff completed his monumental Jpegs series in which he explores the distribution and reception of images in the digital age. Starting with images he culls primarily from the Web, Ruff enlarges them to a gigantic scale, which exaggerates the pixel patterns until they become sublime geometric displays of color. Many of Ruff’s works in the series focus on idyllic, seemingly untouched landscapes, and conversely, scenes of war, and nature disturbed by human manipulation.

In this clip, Thomas Ruff speaks about several recent bodies of work such as the series on Mies van der Rohe’s architecture that lead him to his next abstract series of Japanese blurred manga images playing with superimposition. Then, Ruff presents the Jpegs series, explaining how he is interested in revealing the structure of the image and their dissemination on Internet. By enlarging them, Ruff also plays with the perception of these images when the pixel patterns becomes sublime geometric displays of color. Finally, he touches on his newest work in two series: Zycles and Cassini, of abstract images created by a computer program.

The full version of this talk is available on vimeo and on our multimedia section, divided in four different clips.

Aperture and the photography department in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design presented this conversation between artist Thomas Ruff and writer, former picture editor, Philip Gefter, on February 12, 2010 at Aperture Gallery.

Thomas Ruff is among the most important international photographers to emerge in the last fifteen years, and one of the most enigmatic and prolific of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s former students, a group that includes Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer, and Axel Hutte.

In 2009, Aperture released the first monograph dedicated exclusively to the publication of Ruff’s remarkable series: JPEGS. In 2007, Ruff completed his monumental Jpegs series in which he explores the distribution and reception of images in the digital age. Starting with images he culls primarily from the Web, Ruff enlarges them to a gigantic scale, which exaggerates the pixel patterns until they become sublime geometric displays of color. Many of Ruff’s works in the series focus on idyllic, seemingly untouched landscapes, and conversely, scenes of war, and nature disturbed by human manipulation.