OLIVER WEBER
Social Life at Beach
Oliver Weber’s new and evolving series Social Life at Beach is a wonderful documentary about the touristic life on the Canary Islands of Spain. Every year hundreds of thousands of tourists, mostly from Germany, England and meanwhile also from Russia, take over the Canary Islands and turn them into the perfect object for observation on “social life at the beach”. La Gomera based photographer Oliver Weber made this subject the theme for his newest series. The result are captivating photographs that show this bizarre, surreal, sometimes melancholic and always fascinating world of tourism with all its side effects and cliches. (Michael Werner)
Oliver Weber (born 1970) is a photographer who hails from Munich, Germany. Currently he lives and works on the Canary Island of La Gomera. His specialty areas are reportage, portrait and what has come to be recognized as street photography. He has become more widely known through numerous features with reputable magazines and publishing houses, like DIE ZEIT, DER SPIEGEL, El PAIS and MERIAN.
Through his 2007 exhibition “Humans” (Galerie Foto 21) in Bredevoort, Netherlands, Oliver Weber became more broadly accessible to an international audience. This occasion also saw the publication by Kulturbuch Verlag of his first book of photographs which was nominated for the German Photo Book Award..
Hessischer Rundfunk (11th February 2008) reviews the photographer and his work: “What characterises all of Oliver Weber´s work is the incredible calm and serenity captured in his photographs and in how he takes them. They communicate affection, dedication, and, most of all, a sense of time. (…) His pictures tell stories revealing deep insights into individual human lives, in different situations, and capturing an essence which unfolds in one´s viewing. This is exactly what good photography can and should achieve and for which Oliver Weber has a penetrating eye.”
2011 Oliver published his second book ‘Analogue’, which was featured by The Camera Club of New York during its photo book fair July 2011. 2012 Oliver Weber 2012 Weber took part on several “solo” and “group” exihibitions including his work, like the Documenta (13) in Kassel, Germany and the Photokina in Cologne, Germany.
© Oliver Weber