Karin Borghouts 
‘The Spirit Of Place’
Galerie Zwart Huis, Knokke
24.3.2012 - 29.4.2012

«Her sharply analytical eye gives her a keen sensitivity to environments, interiors and buildings. Doors, windows, corridors and stairs acquire an almost archetypal meaning within them. She feels the monumentality of buildings and museums like no other photographer. The majesty and breadth of the halls that she portrays on the flat surface of a photograph are fascinating. The image becomes a diorama full of fine details in sharp clarity, thanks to her sophisticated photography technique and the sublime quality of the prints.

Information about the surroundings whose presence is no longer latent, but raised by the photo into a conscious field of perception throught which the poetry of human spatial activity can come to the surface. The spirit of combined contingency and human ability (and inability) are thus sensitively revealed from behind the concealing veil of subconscious perception. Karin Borghouts’ photos are located on the balancing point between documentary language and inner vision.

Karin Borghouts (°1959, Kapellen, Belgium) studied painting and sculpture and has worked as a  graphic designer. She started taking photographs in 1999. Her work occupies a position between photography and visual art, and is rich in references to painting. Her highly ingenious photos can be found, for example, in the collections of the Fotomuseum and the Museum Aan deStroom in Antwerp. Her work has been exhibited in major European and Japanese cities. Various publications of and about her work are available».

© Chinese room 2010, from the series ‘The Show’ Courtesy Karin Borghouts

TODD HIDO

Silver Meadows itself is a real place—a modest Midwestern suburban development that grew and pushed into former farmland on the outskirts of Kent. The setting of Hido’s childhood, it also became the creative wellspring for his work. Compelled to contend with his personal history, Hido wanders deliberately yet randomly in search of imagery that connects with his recollections. In Excerpts from Silver Meadows, this memory-driven approach turns his personal history into an ethereal realm populated by the exquisite and the insidious. Collectively, these photographs present the artist’s metaphorical reckoning with his own past, while providing a majestic summation of the suburban childhood experience in general, where community can be constructed from whole cloth, and homes built similarly to convey stability actually conceal lives seething with sexual and psychological instability. From homes like these, generations of American teenagers have sought escape through the emancipating pleasures promised by sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. (Stephen Wirtz Gallery)

© Todd Hido

BLAKE BURTON | CITY HALL EAST

«A series on a decaying American industrial landmark in the city of Atlanta.  City Hall East, a formers Sears distribution center, is the largest building in the southeast United States and is currently undergoing a complete renovation that will take several years to complete.  I had the privilege of exploring inside for quite some time and documenting its current condition».

© Blake Burton

Editions 2 (Group Show)
Elipsis Gallery, Istanbul
16.3.2012 - 19.4.2012

http://www.elipsisgallery.com/

Elipsis Gallery is pleased to announce the long awaited ‘Editions II’ exhibition bringing together the works of five different artists held from 16 March until 19 April 2012. Up & coming photographer Yusuf Sevinçli is taking part in the show with partly seen works from his ‘Good Dog’ series. Through Sevinçli’s works we view a very personal and somewhat intimate record of his surroundings. Intrigued by the darkness, we are encompassed with curiosity as we follow his path. Metehan Ozcan shows a selection of photographs focusing on abandoned spaces. This time we see the decay and scraps of what were once fully functional public spaces. The bareness is emphasized; the deteriorated and the remaining objects highlight the absence. 
Acclaimed ad-director Charles Richards participates in Editions II with his portrait photography. His works stand out with his great use of light, lines and framing. These portraits display stillness and emotional strength in his famous subjects, actors, musicians and artists. 
One of the youngest artists of the five, Seza Bali is exhibiting her ‘New Landscapes’ series for the first time in Turkey. In this body of work, Bali actually combines conventional photography with digital to create an illusion between reality and fantasy. Our perception of reality changes as we discover new memories or experiences from the unknown yet familiar landscapes.
Last but not least, Alp Klanten who currently studies at ICP, New York, is taking part with three works from Istanbul. Klanten focuses on the vast change and development, the social and economic contradiction in Istanbul and Turkey within the context of modernity.
Standing out with its dynamic selection and its awareness of contemporary photography, ‘Editions II’ brings together these five emerging photographers from Turkey with different styles and approaches.

© Metehan Ozcan

‎Joni Sternbach 
‘Surfland’
Southeast Museum of Photography
27.1.2012 - 22.4.2012 

Captured directly on the shoreline, Joni Sternbach’s luminous images possess the immediate quality of a singular print created then-and-there as she captures portraits of contemporary surfers in tintype, a 19th-century technique first used during the American Civil War and little changed since then. The large camera seems to slow down time, so that her subjects possess a distilled and timeless grace and beauty that seems so far removed from the energy, movement and animation we commonly associate with the surfing life.

The technical procedure is labor intensive, with the chemistry mixed and applied to metal plates just seconds before each exposure; meaning that the chemicals must be hand-applied, exposed and developed before the plate dries. The exposure time is also very long, requiring stillness on behalf of the subject for many seconds. Sternbach’s vintage process lured surfers to pose for her camera and has resulted in what the photographer calls “part performance, part laboratory.”

 © Joni Sternbach

ALLA ESIPOVICH | ‘NO COMMENT’ 

«We see photographs of elderly people, representing various professions and different social classes. All this is straight photography, without any computer working or printing ploys. The fashionable media nuance is unrecquired; the task here is something quite different. It is cardinally important that there should be nothing started; nothing “stagey”. There is also the ethical problem regarding the manipulation of old men and women and making them pose. Yet the artist does not make them do this. If they themselves want to pose, regarding the situation of self-demonstration and self-presentation as same way of manifesting their own identity, they are welcome to do so. The social  aspect? This is also present in the series. It is impossible to live society and be free of society, according to Vladimir Lenin, the creator of the very society in which the heroes and heroines spent most of their lives.
There is indeed much is Soviet and much that is social here – in the outer appearance of heroes and heroines, in the patterns of  their  behaviour  and in the typical interiors. There are, however, no Conceptual or Art accents, even though the material could have led onto this. One photograph of an interior, for example, dolls co-exist with images of the Madonna and Lenin. The attention is not, however, specially focused on this. As Russian artist Eric Bulatov used to say, this is the “parallel reality” of our existence – and no more. There are also sing of a local cultural contiguity. The photographs are all of  Leningraders, who only recently became Peterburgers. While  these aspects sometimes attract our attention, they are not the most important things. What is? Why does the artist reject so many attractive – media, staged-playful, social-emblematic – baits, to which both socially advanced and simple viewers are so prone?»

Alexander Borovsky (Head of the departament of contemporary art State Russian Museum)

© Alla Esipovich

Shortcut of the Day: Gerry Johansson

GERRY JOHANSSON | ‘PONTIAC’

From this beautiful photo book, Martin Brink has started his own project, as he wrote: «In 2011 I bought the photobook Pontiac by Gerry Johansson, who mentioned that some of the spots in the book could be viewed in Street View. In the beginning of 2012 I started researching Street View for potential projects and came to think of Pontiac. I searched, started looking and was stuck in front of the screen. I used the street names from the book as a travel guide while exploring Pontiac. Using the book was a way to narrow my search down, essential when using Street View. Below is a small selection of what was found». Find out more here

© Gerry Johansson

DAVID HEMPENSTALL | CAMP SLAYER

Several months have passed since David Hempenstall submitted his work ‘Camp Slayer’. Much time has passed. Maybe I am loosing the authentic desire of writing. Everything goes too fast for me. Yet this afternoon I’ve checked this series again and I found that there is a thread that unites the many istant shots gathered by David in Iraq. As Dan Rule has written well, is what they conceal rather than display, which makes this project different and intriguing.

So writes the critic  Dan Rule «Eschewing the politicisation and dramatism of war photography, these tightly framed photographs capture mere snippets of the pragmatic, everyday details: tyre prints in dust, a fuel drum, the rusted wall of a shipping container. But what makes them so effective is what they choose not to disclose. A crudely laid concrete path leads to nowhere; the entrance to a nylon tent remains securely zipped. These snapshots, crops and abstractions act as evidence of something much greater and more sinister.» 

David rather than to question the possibility to recount with one click a whole war, reminds us that the idea of war itself may be too tragic to be represented. And this part binds to the true experience during which the photographer has made these images. «Camp Slayer is made up of 165 Time Zero Polaroid prints made on the US Military base of the same name. I made these photographs while working on the exhumation and documentation of mass graves in Iraq from mid-2005 till early-2007. The photographs explore the occupying force’s use of the former Presidential Palace complex on the outskirts of Baghdad».

I think that David is able to recover the feeling of helplessness and, above all, of incomprehension that we feel when we look at the innocent victims of wars. We can not give us a reason.  At least, not as human beings. (Steve Bisson)

© David Hempenstall

BY MARCO RISTUCCIA

1. First of all, some words about your introduction into photography. What’s behind your choice of this means of expression? How did you get started?

«People, the world and the environments we live in have always fascinated me. For me photography has always been my favourite way to express my reactions or point of view to them. I cant really remember wanting to do anything else. My dad used to always take pictures when I was young so I suppose that got me in to it. One of the best things about photography for me is being able to immerse myself in my subject and to put myself into situations and environments that I would otherwise not be in. I think that photography is definitely a language that you develop and can become more effective at expressing your self through as you continue».

2. In all the projects your pictures look very meditative. You seem to have a slow and introspective attitude. What is your methodological approach and what are the artists who inspired you?

«I often think of something or a theme I want to photograph, but more often than not this will change over time as I develop it. The way I like to work most is to just go somewhere and explore for me this is one of the best things about photography, the places and situations you get in and the people you meet. You can plan things as much as you like, but its not until you get to a location that you see things, or discover things that you wouldn’t have imagined. For me it is definitely as much about the process as the final image. I am very influenced by early British photographers such as Daniel Meadows, Keith Arnett, and Chris Killip; whose beautiful touching portraits I find very inspiring. Other influences are Joel Sternfeld, Paul Graham, Taryn Simon and David Goldblatt, for their extensive and compelling bodies of work. Another photographer who I have recently found very inspiring is Lars Tunbjork. Although his style is quite different to mine, he has a very unique way of looking at things, that to me is like he is seeing something for the first time. This is something I always try to take on when I’m photographing».

3. Talking about your work “Show”. Today we observe more and more often physical relationships between people and lifeless things. Smartphones, PDAs and mp3 players are the things we relate to, even love, and always keep in our hands all day long. The relationship with pets, by very keeping them between arms, seems to pull out a different mood from people. By looking at your photos though I can see something perturbing. Can you comment on this?

«I have always been interested in people’s relationships with animals. I believe that there is definitely a growing detachment from nature and animals in our society. As this detachment grows animals are seem more and more like objects. This project came about from a series of trips to animal shows. From these early visits, I became fascinated by the Rabbit Shows. There is a strict judging process looking at ear length, fur size, weight etc. Rabbits are bred to fit into a set of pre ordained requirements of what the perfect rabbit should look like. As I started to photograph them, I realised that there is more to them than pets, people live through these animals and express themselves though them. I don’t doubt that these animals are loved by their owners but there is definitely as you say a perturbing feel to them, in the way they are handled and presented. It is almost as if they become inanimate objects».

4. “Allaleigh” seems a journey of memory, almost dreamlike. A place where time seems to slow down and finally give an advantage to space, whether physical or introspective. Do you have a special relationship with that place? What are the reasons that motivated you to tell us about it?

«Yes, Allaleigh is a very special place to me. I used to work there as a farm hand and spent a lot of time on my own cutting wood, feeding the animals and working in the gardens etc. During this time I became very fond of the place and the people there and started to photograph it, so the project evolved naturally out of that. I initially had Ideas of depicting the change and decline of small scale farming in a photo document style. As the project developed though it became more personal to me as I got to know the place and people more. So yes in the end the project did become very personal to me».

5. In the project “Divided” you seem to talk about barriers, at least physical ones. The green nature seems to overfill the world and our eyes. What’s the concept behind it?

«In these photographs I am using the physical divides as a metaphor for the separation and seclusion in our society. This project is work in progress and has evolved naturally. Whilst photographing I often find myself drawn to a housing or residential area and have been struck by the lack of community in our society. Our lives now seem to revolve so much around television and computers, that these areas are like ghosts towns, the only sign of life being the TV ariel’s or a car driving past. We seem to be becoming more and more introvert in our society and through this work I am trying to depict this».

6. “The Road Between” talks about a road that surely will be very busy during the holidays. But you chose to document it outside of this hot period. In fact it seems an almost desolate place. Even the weather, the overcast sky and mist help to make it a nonplace-place. Why did you choose to represent it this way?

«Apart from a small period in the summer Cornwall is a quiet place. I used to travel this section of road quite regularly when I lived in Cornwall. It lies between Bodmin and Newquay and isn’t really a place where anybody would stop. So I suppose that is what drew me to it a kind of mystery. It is as you say a kind of nonplace-place but at the same time it has a kind of realness. It has managed to escape the corporate ubiquitous features of the shops and road side services that shape the face of our landscape. In doing this it has its own kind of interest and beauty to me. There is definitely a conscious decision to photograph in overcast light, for me it creates a cohesion to the work that links the story together. There is also a realness to overcast light that doesn’t romanticise the subject but it for what it is».

7. Now let’s talk about the exhibition time. How important is the printing phase for your works? How much time and care do you invest on this? Do you prefer small or large print sizes for your photos?

«I spend a lot of time working on stuff digitally for my site or for jobs etc. but when I do make a print for exhibition, I realise what it’s all about. When I have the chance I like to hand print, there is something very satisfying when the colours come together on a print and every thing looks just right. I generally shoot medium or large format so like to print large but it all depends on the images».

© Toby Coulson

Yumiku Utsu & Mayumi Hosokura
‘Natures’
Galerie LWS, Paris
19.4.2012 - 19.5.2012

«Yumiko Utsu is of a generation of young Japanese women photographers that took to photography with a passion in the 1990s. Her influences, though, were not from the traditions of Japanese photography but from the mad fantasies of Western artists since Hieronymus Bosch, particularly surrealists like Dali (who famously asked why, when he ordered grilled lobster in a restaurant, he was never presented with a boiled telephone?) and – her favourite – the Czech animator, Jan Švankmajer. Food is always rich in metaphor for surrealists (Švankmajer’s Meat Love, a touching story of two beef steaks falling in love obviously got to Utsu – despite calls for help, her own desperate Rensaku Tomato dissolves before our eyes as we look on in horror, powerless to save it), particularly as there is an uncomfortable point where potential food means confronting a very-much-alive animal. Utsu’s Octopus Portrait is a case in point. This creature has no intention of submitting to a culinary artist. He (she?) is on top of the situation and is determined to remain there. Octopuses have a long tradition of unions with women (almost always with women; Herb Ritt’s Djimon with Octopus, 1989, is exceptional, but then again his octopus is probably gay), their tentacles implying all kinds of insidious ways they can get around their prey. Personally, I would keep my distance from Utsu’s coquettish sitter». 

Text by William A Ewing (from Saatchi Gallery)

© Yumiko Utsu

BARRY FALK | INCIDENTAL SPACES

‘Incidental Spaces’ refers to urban places tucked away and overlooked: edges of car parks, loading bays, parking bays, abandoned spaces, pissed in corners. These are the overlooked details of a city; architectural features which appear to serve no function. Yet when photographed in a certain light and from a particular angle these ‘Incidental Spaces’ become resonant with association. They can also be read as metaphors of loss and as such are suffused with a disturbed sense of self. They refer to Freud’s concept of the unheimliche: the unhomely or uncanny = the familiar which has become alienated through the process of repression. This series of photographs seeks to turn the mundane into the intriguing and the quotidian into images of high psychic value.

© Barry Falk

Shortcut of the Day: Aleksey Kondratyev | ‘Fabricated Adventures’

I am a photographer from Detroit, Michigan. However, I’m originally from Kyrgyzstan. I’m currently studying photography in university. ‘Fabricated Adventures,’ a new series that I’m working on about artificial environments that people use for recreational purposes. I want to show how people have come to not only have the capabilities to physically alter their environment, but to go beyond that to replicate it to varying degrees of accuracy. I think of these environments as reflections of a larger culture of increasingly simulated experiences. As we go further into the ‘digital age,’ more artificial simulations replace authentic experiences.  To me, Photography is a way to show existing things in a different way than they might be physically or consciously perceived by visually studying a subject, and that’s what I hope to do with this series. 

© Aleksey Kondratyev

LAUREN HENKIN | STILL STANDING, STANDING
Introducing A New Handmade Book:

“The example of trees does suggest a harmony for which it seems right to dream.” — Robert Adams

«It is with great pleasure and pride that I present my third handmade book, Still Standing, Standing Still based on the portfolio of images here. This project, about eight months in the making, was my most challenging to date, and I hope that you will find the result as rewarding as I do.

This series began in 2010 with the discovery of a lone tree. Slowly—around and around and around— I examined it in varying light and perspective. It stood alone, with its scars unclothed, threatened by vines, but still standing. A branch was broken off by lightning or other violent act. The tree didn’t seem to mind, the flaw adding to its power, a permanent reminder that it had survived the violation and was unashamed of the defect.

I became obsessed with its form and photographed it more intensely than any subject I have ever focused on.  When we met, yet another relationship was ending, I had moved 3,000 miles across the country from the safety of my family, and my body, like it, was being scaled by threatening growth.

Soon after photographing this series, I had two major abdominal surgeries.  What I am left with, beyond my ongoing fear of being broken, are marks—the scars I now wear both emotional and literal. My stomach is stamped in blemishes.  And yet, I think about my big sister, Debbie, who lives independently with Down Syndrome. Every day, without reprieve, she is reminded through stares, labels and other subtle humiliations of her vulnerabilities.  I can still hide mine.  She cannot; this tree cannot, and I look to them both as models for how to proudly persevere.

From the beginning, my goal for the book was to lead the viewer through the same experience I had in photographing the tree—an opportunity to get lost in one thing, in the layers of complexity discernible only by looking closer and closer.  The question of how much information I should offer (whether even to reveal whether it is one specimen) was always in my mind. In exhibition, I leave the last image in the series, a large contextual shot of its position in the landscape, to answer any lingering questions about what you’ve viewed up to that point. Whether the structure of the book would allow for that was uncertain.

I started thinking about structure and turned to Rory Sparks, an extremely talented bookbinder here in Portland.  Of one thing I was certain—I wanted the viewer to be able to read the book in the traditional way, page by page, held in the hand, but I also felt it necessary to experience walking around the book, as I did the tree, to expand the book into a sculptural object. I was fascinated by the idea of being able to walk around a book, with the hope also, that seeing the images spread open in that way would create a third, unexpected perspective where the images would blend to form a single abstract image that from afar, would be recognizable only by color, line and form.

Rory and I decided to employ a drum leaf structure that would allow me to use single-sided sheets and the book to be fully opened and secured with a magnet.  Next came paper, size and how would I present the full image of this tree—if at all.  I made test prints on Moab Entrada, Hahnemühle German Etching, Museum Etching, Japanese kozo, and a few others.  The images are colorful and bright with consistently warm yellows and greens.  The Entrada and German Etching, normal standbys for me, weren’t going to work here, they were too white and bright.  I also needed a heavier paper to reinforce the book when being displayed vertically.  I chose Museum Etching, and despite it being the most expensive option, it was perfect for this project.

Find out more here

© Lauren Henkin

JEN DAVIS | SELF-PORTRAITS

Born in 1978, Akron, Ohio. Jen Davis is a Brooklyn based photographer. For the past 9 years she has been working on a series of Self-Portrait’s dealing with issues regarding beauty, identity, and body image.  She has also been exploring men, as a subject and is interested in investigating the idea of relationships, both physical and psychological, with the camera. She received her MFA from Yale University in 2008, and her BA from Columbia College Chicago in 2002. Jen is represented by Lee Marks Fine Art.

© Jen Davis

Suggestions welcome…

This list is a work in progress that starts from the suggested exhibitions on the Facebook Group ‘Photo Exhibitions’. Join the group and contribute to our list…

ACTE 2 GALLERY, Paris / AMPERSAND, Portland / BARBARA GROSS GALLERY, München / BLINDSPOT GALLERY, Hong Kong / BLUE SKY, Portland / BRANCOLINI GRIMALDI GALLERY, London / C4 CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY, Los Angeles / CARLOS ISHIKAWA, London / CATHERINE BASTIDE, Brussel / C L A I R, Paris / CLAMPART, New York / COPPER HOUSE GALLERY, Dublin / DANIEL BLAU, London / DEICHTOR HALLEN, Hamburg / DIEMAR NOBLE GALLERY, London / EXPOSURE GALLERY, London / FOTO 8 GALLERY, London / FOTOGALERIE IM BLAUEN HAUS, Munich / FREELENS GALERIE, Hamburg / GALERIE m BOCHUM, Bochum / GALERIE LWS, Paris / GALLERI IMAGE, Aarhus / GALLERY KAYAFAS, Boston / GALLERY PHOTOGRAPHER.RU, Moscow / GITTERMAN GALLERY, New York / RICHARD HELLERY GALLERY, Santa Monica / HIPPOLYTE GALLERY, Helsinki / HUA GALLERY, London IDEA GENERATION, London / JAMES HYMAN PHOTOGRAPHY, London / JEN BEKMAN GALLERY, New York / STEVEN KASHER GALLERY, New York / KERRY-SIDE GALLERY, Newcastle / KLOMPCHING GALLERY, New York LA PETITE POULE NOIRE, Paris / LAURENCE MILLER GALLERY, New York / LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY, New York / LUMIERE GALLERY, Atlanta / LÚZ GALLERY, Victoria / MATT’S GALLERY, London / THE MOREL DERGLER GALLERY, Jerusalem / NAILYA ALEXANDER GALLERY, New York / NOORDERLICHT GALLERY, Groningen / NORDIN GALLERY, Stockholm / NOWHERE GALLERY, Milan / OHWOW, Los Angeles / PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY, Ottawa / PETER LAV GALLERY, Copenhagen /ROBER KOCH GALLERY, San Francisco RUSSIANTEAROOM, Paris / SASHA WOLF GALLERY, New York / SIKKEMA JENKINS CO, New York / SPAZIO LABO’, Bologna / SPRIOVERI GALLERY, London / STEPHEN BULGER GALLERY, Toronto / THE EMPTY QUARTER, Dubai / THE PHOTOGRAPHERS’S GALLERY, London / THIRD FLOOR GALLERY, Cardiff / TIMOTHY TAYLOR GALLERY, London / YANCEY RICHARDSON, New York / YOSSI MILO, New York / YOUNG GALLERY, Brussel / WHITECHAPELGALLERY, STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY, San Francisco / London / WORKSPACE GALLERY, Lincoln / ZENO X GALLERY, Antwerp / 44 GALLERY, Brugge

Shortcut of the Day: Christian Flatscher