CHRIS BOYNE

blueberry hill was my MFA thesis project from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  This project is about sentiment—the sentiment of story telling.  I have used messy little bits of story and memory to create the work.  These bits have been carefully considered.  Running aground sailing with the Liston’s in Mahone Bay or eating Blackberries on Blueberry Hill.  Holding breath and thunderstorms and masturbation.  Travel lifts and yard trucks and stubby bottles.  All of these bits come together in this work and they are connected through me because they are mine but there are other connections.  Some are literal and specific to time and place- the stories are all from Nova Scotia and most involve the ocean but there are other more important and less literal connections.

© Chris Boyne

Lewis Baltz
Kunstmuseum, Bonn
16.4.2012 - 2.9.2012

Kunstmuseum Bonn is showing the first retrospective in a German museum of an American photographer who today is legendary. Already in the early 1970s, Lewis Baltz, born 1945 in Newport Beach, California, arrived on the scene with photos that launched him as an essential groundbreaker on the way to (new) art photography. At the age of 26 with “Tract Houses”, Baltz had his first solo exhibition at the famous New York gallery of Leo Castelli, and remained within its program till the early 1990s. Baltz (as well as Hilla and Bernd Becher) took part in the 1975 epochal exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape”.

In view of his clear formal vocabulary, Baltz was initially seen as a documentarist. However, since 1986 and his residency in Paris and Venice, his photography has, at least at first glance, radically changed. Instead of a copious series of small-sized black-and-white photographs, large-scale color photography has since the 1990s replaced them. Nonetheless, thematically, the artist has remained true to himself. The subject is always the coming to terms with urban space, architecture, landscape and ecology, which allows Baltz to emerge as a subtle political artist far removed from eye-catching or confrontational tendencies.

Already in his early art, the Prototype Works (1967–76) or the New Industrial Parks near Irvine (1973–75), Baltz confounded us with an enormously austere formal vocabulary that underscored the flat photographic plane, which however, within each series, was also multiply breached. His historically innovative landscape photographs document places that are the product of industrial civilization: wasteland, industrial areas, warehouses. Their spatial constructs, in the rigorous form of blackand-white photography, manifest an unmistakable analogy to Minimal Art. Aesthetic appreciation and horror at the price of so-called progress mark the two contrary poles of how Baltz’s photography could/can be viewed. This continued in another vein in the series Sites of Technology, as well as in the large, bright-colored diptychs of the 1990s and, not least of all, applies to the gigantic wall Rond de Nuit (1992–95), in which Baltz takes the conventional understanding of documentary photography to its limits.

Image: Lewis Baltz, Unoccupied office, Mitsubishi, Vitre (FR), 1989-1991. Aus der Serie 89/91 Sites of Technology © Lewis Baltz, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln

Peter Fraser
‘A City in the Mind’
Brancolini Grimaldi, London
25.5.2012 - 21.7.2012

Brancolini Grimaldi announces a new exhibition by photographer Peter Fraser. Peter Fraser has created a portrait of London unlike any other. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities in which the explorer Marco Polo tells the Emperor Kublai Khan of the many fantastical cities he has visited on his travels, Fraser has spent the past five years photographing his current home, London, with the aim of creating an imagined “city in the mind”. In a series of intimate and enigmatic images, Fraser reveals a poetic vision of London which appears to bear little if any relation to the city as we know it. 

What kind of city has Fraser created? Several photographs feature antiquated miniatures or models, perhaps from some kind of museum. Other images show objects whose visceral texture and colour leaps out from the picture plane –a suggestively fleshy conch shell; shiny chestnuts on a table; the glowing red vellum of a volume of Who’s Who. A dazzling chandelier and a gold chair hint at opulent palaces. Others could relate to learning –a white board is the subject of one image; an antique model of penicillin another. The objects chosen by Fraser could be read as portals to another world, openings onto stories and histories, even other civilizations. And here, as in his previous work, Fraser’s eye is drawn to things and interiors that would not fascinate most as they do him. The London of Fraser’s mind is mysterious and allusive, and reminds us that ultimately all cities are created in the mind.

Peter Fraser was born in Cardiff in 1953 and graduated in photography from Manchester Polytechnic University in 1976. In 1982 Fraser began working with a Plaubel Makina camera, which led to an exhibition with William Eggleston at the Arnolfini, Bristol, in 1984. Fraser’s many books include Two Blue Buckets (1988), Deep Blue (1997), and Lost for Words (2010). In 2002 the Photographers’ Gallery, London, staged a twentyyear survey of Fraser’s work, and in 2004 he was shortlisted for the Citibank Photography Prize. 

A monograph of A City in the Mind is co-published by Steidl and Brancolini Grimaldi with a foreword by Brian Dillon in May 2012. A major exhibition of Peter Fraser’s work will be at Tate St Ives from the 26th January to the 6th May 2013. Tate will publish a monograph covering the whole of Fraser’s career to date with an essay by David Chandler.

© Peter Fraser, courtesy of Brancolini Grimaldi Gallery, London

‎’From Sermons in Stones to Monsters of Modernity’
James Hyman Photography, London
9.5.2012 - 26.5.2012

James Hyman Photography has recently presented one of the most substantial exhibitions of rare, early salt prints ever staged by a commercial gallery in London. A specially curated presentation brings together two of the greatest achievements of Western civilization: Gothic architecture and the invention of photography.

The exhibition title references the religious significance of the portal programmes of Gothic cathedrals with their multiple biblical scenes as well as the gargoyles of Notre Dame that were the mid-nineteenth century invention of Viollet-le-Duc. The exhibition traces the ways in which the great Gothic churches and cathedrals of France were placed at the heart of their work by the most important French photographers of the 1840s and 1850s.

The artists presented will include Edouard Baldus, Edmond Bacot, Hippolyte Bayard, Bisson Fe, Gustave le Gray, Ange Mailand, Pierre Manguin, Charles Marville, Charles Negre, Emile Pecarrere (Em. Pec.), Henri Le Secq, and Varin Freres.

The exhibition is accompanied by a scholarly new book on the subject with an essay by James Hyman. In it Hyman argues: ‘The daemons of science, positivism and modernism have conspired to obscure spirituality and humanism by equating photography with realism and photography of architecture with a merely documentary function.’ Instead he proposes that: «The Gothic revival of the mid nineteenth century and specifically the legacy of Victor Hugo’s novel, Notre Dame de Paris (1831) provided a lead towards a creative, subjective, even fantastic approach to the photographic motif. Whilst it may be more comfortable to ally early photographers, first to the enlightenment and then to Modernism, the preponderance of religious images suggests something more complex in their negotiation between the forces of church and state. The more one engages with content, as well as technique and form, the more one appreciates that the first years of photography in France - from patronage to production - are inextricably linked with a revived interest not just in France’s cultural patrimonie, and specifically a renewed appreciation of this Gothic ecclesiastical past, but also religious revivalism, include Charles Negre’s intimate depiction of a priest seated at prayer, rare salt prints by Pierre Manguin and a selection of extraordinary salt prints of cathedral portals by Brebisson, Em. Pec., Le Secq, Bisson Freres and Negre».

CENTRALE FOTOGRAFIA - IV edition
“nella propria stanza”
Fano
8-9-10 June 2012

From 8 to 10 June 2012 Centrale Fotografia, the annual festival dedicated to
photography and contemporary art, returns to Fano for its IV edition. The event aims to provide an overview on Italian photography by presenting artists talks, exhibitions, conferences, film screenings, collateral events, meetings and occasions to reflect upon the photographic mean.
It is organized by Associazione Culturale Centrale Fotografia, in collaboration with Assessorato alla Cultura del Comune di Fano, Assemblea Legislativa delle Marche, it is supported by Studio d’architettura Tomassini, Caffè Centrale, Omnia Comunicazione, Hotel Orfeo and Ristorante Pizzeria Florida.
Curated by Luca Panaro and Marcello Sparaventi, the festival focuses this year on the topic: “on its own room”. The invited artists will investigate the connections between photography and contemporary life, by exploring the possibilities of extending the vision of the camera outside of their own domestic environment, but without getting out of it. With few means at disposal in their room, a table, their own body, some common objects, they will be able to create images that reveal a universal language and symbols of contemporary life.
The two established artists Alessandra Spranzi and Paolo Ventura, this year special guests, will introduce to the public their point of view on the topic “on its own room” by presenting their interesting current artistic research.
At the core of the program, the show Carousel, curated by Luca Panaro, and held in the ancient building of the Rocca Malatestiana. The exhibition takes its title from 1961 Kodak slide projectors. The works of four artists Nadia Groff, Selene Lazzarini, Chiara Proserpio and Katia Rigali, will interact between the old technology of the projector and a new approach to crate images on the festival topic.
Among the other events, the film show La fotografia al cinema, the show Immagini, musica, parole. Diatape e video1992-2002, dedicated to photography theorist Roberto Signorini (Milan 1947-2009), and Photography and performance, conference by Luca Panaro. The program includes also the prize-giving of Vist’Amare / immagini del mare Adriatico, national competition on photographic image dedicated to Pier Lorenzo Tomassini and the Space HF distribution book shop, with a selection of art and photography editorial proposals.

© Alessandra Spranzi, Cose che accadono #43, 2005-2009 (courtesy Nicoletta Rusconi)

Ibán Ramón
‘Activities’
4.6.2012 - 31.7.2012
Vicente Navarro, Valencia, Spain

Resistance Activities consists of 40 images of Iban Ramon speaking of the relationship between human beings and their environment, how the landscape is affected and modified by the human action, but also his resistance to the tenacity of nature. «They all show the resilience of nature that eventually returns to its territory. But also talk about the human resistance against the natural elements, where resilience and perseverance have become visible». By capturing this attitude of passive resistance, Ramon tries to reflect, as noted, his own process of survival, «sometimes I have traveled very far just to find a strange landscape, which has been within me all the time.» The location of the exhibition is for the author a way to give another meaning to his work. With it, Ramon try to surprise the viewer «show the wildernesses in urban living quarters, and verify its interpretation».

‘Resistance Activities’ is completed with some images of the series that the designer is currently developing around the theme of ‘typographic Spanish lanscapes’. The spanish photographer was interview on Phototalk issue #28.

© Ibán Ramón

Camilo José Vergara
Invisible Cities 

Since the 1970’s I have been documenting America’s ghettos by photographing the built environment in Harlem, the South Bronx, Chicago, Newark and other places. I record mostly the buildings where people live, the factories, institutions and offices where they work, the streets they walk along, objects people use, and the fields and parks in which they play. I take photographs of the pictures and drawings I find on bedroom walls, inside abandoned factories and on external building walls. I also photograph objects people use such as toys, fire hydrants, and old machines. From the beginnings of my project I decided not to focus on images of poor people—often minorities who inhabit these areas, an approach the street photographer Helen Levitt might have taken. For me a visual history of urban America organized around portraits of minority residents would be very limited. People are often engaging; their feelings and emotions are moving; yet it is often difficult to know much about them from photographic likenesses. I found that images of the physical communities in which people live often better reveal the choices made by residents and city officials over the long haul. When presented together as a series, photographs of the built environment constitute the essential element of an urban history told from the ground up.

I use photographs as a means of discovery, as a tool with which to clarify visions and construct knowledge about a particular place, or city. I take panoramic photograph of cities from high viewpoints as well as from ground level. I prefer to photograph with even light, avoiding haze, harsh shadows or rain so the images are as clear and revealing as possible. A set of photographs coupled with interviews from a block, neighborhood or a building became the starting point for developing stories that I hope will help establish a place’s changing identity. My work asks basic questions: what was this place in the past, who uses it now, and what are its current prospects? Using insights from a variety of disciplines such as ethnography, history, and archeology, I uncover patterns shaping the nation’s poorest and most segregated postindustrial cities.

© Camilo José Vergara

Michel Bonvin

Lee Friedlander
‘America By Car’
Det Nationale Fotomuseum, Copenhagen
8.6.2012 - 1.9.2012

In June the exhibition America by Car by the legendary master photographer Lee Friedlander opens. In 192 black-and-white photographs, all taken from the interiors of rental cars, he draws a remarkable portrait of modern USA.
On various road trips over the past decade Friedlander (b.1934) has travelled through most parts of USA in rental cars. Without ever leaving the car he has documented eccentricities and iconic sides of modern USA seen through car windows and side and rear mirrors.
In the exhibition’s many pictures we travel through the wilds, majestic mountain landscapes and big cities, and we see some of the people Friedlander met on his journeys. But every motive is framed and distanced by the interior of the car.
In this way Friedlander creates visual encounters, where steering wheel and dash board collide with classic American landscapes, motels, monuments, trucks and road signs. Often we also get a glimpse of Friedlander himself in the side mirrors.
Friedlander began photographing in the 1950’s and in the beginning of the 1960’s he became a part of the innovative and highly influential group of documentary photographers in New York, such as Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus.
America by Car was published in 2010 by Fraenkel Gallery and D.A.P and has been exhibited at Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and at Timothy Taylor Gallery in London.

Designers Rikkert Paauw and Jet van Zwieten of Foundation Projects transform refuse skips and their contents into small buildings.

EDWARD S. CURTIS

Born in 1868 near Whitewater, Wisconsin, Edward Sheriff Curtis became one of America’s finest photographers and ethnologists. When the Curtis family moved to Port Orchard, Washington in 1887, Edward’s gift for photography led him to an investigation of the Indians living on the Seattle waterfront. His portrait of Chief Seattle’s daughter, Princess Angeline, won Curtis the highest award in a photographic contest. Having become well-known for his work-with the Indians, Curtis participated in the 1899 Harriman expedition to Alaska as one of two official photographers. He then accompanied George Bird Grinell, editor of Forest and Stream, on a trip to northern Montana. There they witnessed the deeply sacred Sundance of the Piegan and Blackfoot tribes. Travelling on horseback, with their pack horses trailing behind, they emerged from the mountains to view the valley floor massed with over a thousand teepees - an awesome sight to Curtis and one that transformed his life. Everything fell into place at that moment: it was clear to him that he was to record, with pen and camera, the life of the North American Indian. Edward S. Curtis devoted the next 30 years photographing and documenting over eighty,tribes west of the Mississippi, from the Mexican border to northern Alaska. His project won support from such prominent and powerful figures as President Theodore Roosevelt and J. Pierpont Morgan. From 1911-1914 Curtis also produced and directed a silent film based on the mythology of the Rawakiutl Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Upon its completion in 1930, the work, entitled The North American Indian, consisted of 20 volumes, each containing 75 hand—pressed photogravures and 300 pages of text. Each volume was accompanied by a corresponding portfolio containing at least 36 photogravures.

© Edward S. Curtis:  A Smoky Day at the Sugar Bowl—Hupa, ca. June 30, 1923

HAROLD DIAZ 

With disruptive, ruthless and attractive shots the American photographer Harold Diaz drag us into the reality of the discount malls. He does it with pitiless lucidity and without too much hesitation. We like the way he photographs and slaps reality without too many filters. A precise choice, willed, determined from a direct and instinctive look, still careful enough to grasp the most significant details. His way to portray these places doesn’t seem overblown and fake, but disarming. It is through this natural confidence that Diaz seems to claim a less expected reality and reproach the drama that is hidden behind it. In his images people and consumer objects come to confuse themselves to the point that its hard to understand what is truly more important today. A statement very explicit, and without false indulgences, on human dignity at the beginning of the new millennium.

© All copyright Harold Diaz

© Simen Johan