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2 / 2 0 0 6 G B P 9 , E U R 12 . 8 0

THE PRINTED PAGE

STEFAN KRUCKENHAUSER

HOUSTON FOTOFEST

RENCONTRES D ’ARLES

LEICA OSKAR BARNACK AWARD

PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS 2007

PHOTO METROPOLIS NEW YORK

INTERVIEW WITH PETER GAL ASSI

LEICA M8

HEIDI BRADNER

JAMES WHITLOW DEL ANO

ESTEBAN PASTORINO DIAZ

ANDREW Z. GLICKMAN

BENEDICTE L ASSALLE

ANDREAS MEICHSNER

TOMAS MUNITA

PIERRE WITT

PAOLO ROVERSI

10 YEARS OF

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Photo - Metropolis New York

THE PLACE TO BE

Let there be no doubt: if you deal with the medium as collector or critic, curator or editor,

art buyer or professional photographer, you cannot ignore New York. This is where trends are

created, and prices. For 20th century photoart at any rate, New York remains the place to be.

ON AME RICA’ S LE F T WING - LIBE R AL east coast, where the Hudsonmeets the Atlantic, is New York, a city whose size and population ofmore than eight million, whose pulsating business and cultural lifemake it one of the world’s few true metropolises. Architecturally andstructurally it is the 20th century’s first modern city. It is also the placewhere a modern medium like photography has a presence unparal-leled throughout the world. So New York is not only a center within theUSA, but also in a global sense. To date, its number of museums, gal-leries, agencies, publishing companies and other institutional andcommercial facilities concentrating on the photographic image isbeyond compare, as is the high level, the matter-of-course and the pro-fessionalism of people’s approach to photography. Certainly one rea-son for this is that, soon after the first practicable method had beenannounced in 1839, the medium became very popular in the NewWorld – as regards its creative use as well as its marketing, publicationand reception.

Although New York claims the role of the USA’s leading culturalcity for itself, it does not have a single museum that is dedicated exclu-sively to the medium of photography. But the city is distinguished by anumber of world-famous museums and institutions where photogra-phy is collected, exhibited and communicated. One of the mostfamous is without doubt the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Mid-town Manhattan on 53rd Street and not far from the famous FifthAvenue. When it was established in 1929, the avowed aim of its initia-

tors – three progressive and influential patrons of the arts, Miss Lillie P.Bliss, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan – was toreshape the conservative museum scene and create a location for mod-ern art. Under founding director Alfred H. Barr, who operated with anextended concept of art oriented on the Bauhaus curriculum, a struc-ture was created for the first time that included separate departmentsfor architecture and design, film and video, and photography – alongwith the ‘classical’ ones for paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints andillustrated books. In 1933, with Walker Evans’ photographs of Victo-rian houses, the museum exhibited photography for the first time. TheDepartment of Photography was established in 1940 – the first in theworld at an art museum. The curator to be appointed was BeaumontNewhall, who was one of the few art historians at the time who under-stood the medium as a means of personal expression and advocatedthis approach in his epoch-making exhibition Photography1839–1937.(His [art] History of Photography became a standard work). Other per-sonalities followed, for example, in 1947, Edward Steichen, a leadingrepresentative of pictorialism, and in later years a prominent fashionand advertising photographer. With the The Family of Man he con-ceived, and was curator of, probably the “most successful [photo] exhi-bition of all times” (Philipp). The exhibition, a production schooled inmodern magazine layout in the service of an ‘ideology of a humanistuniversalism’, opened on January 24, 1955 at the Museum of ModernArt and was afterwards presented in 69 countries and at 85 locations.

Paul Strand, ‘New York’ 1915, Courtesy Aperture Foundation

Edward Steichen, ‘The Flatiron’, New York 1905, Courtesy Aperture Foundation

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S P E C I A L N E W Y O R K

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Houston Fotofest

AH YES, REALITY

Houston seems a long way off, but the trip is worth the effort. It is not the famous stars who are

celebrated here. It is the emerging artists who are presented at the Fotofest. Every kind of visual

strategy is pursued, without adhering to one single restrictive concept. A link to the problems of this

world, however, is not unwelcome.

ONE WOULD NOT BE FAR wrong in associating the name of Houston,Texas, with high-tech, cattle and folklore, even if this is not the entirestory. Houston also stands for art and culture, mainly on account of awealthy upper class with an interest in art. Aficionados of surrealisticart are well acquainted with the Menil Collection, which has probablythe world’s largest number of Magritte paintings. Those interested inphotographs have heard of the Museum of Fine Arts, which quiterecently acquired the superb Manfred Heiting Collection (cf. p. 9). Theproblem is that Houston is not necessarily on the roadmap of interna-tional art tourism, a fact that had also to be taken into considerationwhen it came to establishing a photo festival in America’s fourthbiggest city. Fred Baldwin and Wendy Watriss, both prominent photo-journalists, now retired, had to come up with something special if theyintended to attract attention and tempt a public with an interest in pho-tography into coming to Houston. Their concept was as follows: we donot show what is shown in New York, for example. And we give youngphotographers a genuine chance to make a name for themselves.‘Start-up’ is the word that springs to mind. And with their ‘MeetingPlace’, that is, the portfolio reviews that are held here, the initiators infact set a genuine standard that meanwhile has its imitators from Arlesto Birmingham.

Houston is the festival for discovering mostly young or contempo-rary photographers, a fact also true of this thirteenth edition of thebiennial – again supported by Leica Camera. Once again the slightlymore than forty exhibitions had been subsumed under one or rathertwo topics that only at first glance had nothing to do with each other:the environment (‘The Earth’), and art and violence (‘Artists Respond-ing to Violence’). There were also various sideshows, for example, theDiscovery Show showing the finds of the last festival. One of these isthe young Argentinean photographer, Esteban Pastorino Díaz. Díaz isan example of the new generation of photographers who are no longerconcerned simply with well seen, beautiful pictures, but – against thebackground of a changed media world – with questions of seeing andthe perception of reality. From a technical point of view, his large-for-mat photographs are aerial pictures taken from heights of 15 to 120metres and acquire a distinctly surreal touch owing to the angle ofvision and a deliberately selected partial sharpness of focus. Onemight speak of a ‘Gulliver’ effect that not only makes big things appearsmall, in other words miniaturises our world in an amazing way, butalso compels us to look anew at familiar objects by suddenly bringingthem irritatingly into focus and leaving the rest of the picture blurred.

A young British Leica photographer who has already made a name forherself in the world of photography is Heidi Bradner, who presentedherself at a well arranged exhibition with an essay about the Nenets, anomadic people in northern Siberia. Looking at the pictures one mightbe reminded of Ragnar Axelsson or Claudine Doury, and this impres-sion is not so wrong. Their reports are also dedicated to a life underextreme conditions, in snow and ice. And there is something else thisnew generation of young documentary photographers has in com-mon: their commitment to the Leica system, which never fails to workeven at extremely low temperatures: “I used my Leica in storms”, saysHeidi Bradner, “because it just kept working even though I had snow-drifts on my camera.” What distinguishes Bradner’s essay is the close-ness, spiritual and real, to a people that has completely submitted itslife’s rhythm to nature. In quiet, well constructed pictures, Bradnertells of a frugal life far away from what we usually refer to as civilisa-tion, proving not least that, even in the era of the jet and the Internetthere exists – in the best sense of the word – ‘something foreign’ that isworth exploring with conventional means.

Andrew Z. Glickman is the name of our discovery at the portfolioreviews. The young American presented himself, strictly speaking,with a topic that is not exactly brand new. Walker Evans had alreadyphotographed people using public transport. Luc Delahaye did thesame a while ago. ‘Leica World’ readers will also remember the portfo-lios of Tom Wood and Luis Mallo. What distinguishes Glickman is thathe does not come as a stranger or an artist or a photographer. Hecomes as a participant, not looking for the exceptional but the normal.Glickman, who lives in Washington, uses the subway every day to goto his office. Like Wood he has also made a virtue of necessity andturns the ride underground into a photographic challenge. Equippedwith the discreet Leica M he seeks, not the bizarre, not the event, butthe ‘study’, as Roland Barthes has it; in other words that cool natural-ness which – pictured so plainly and clearly – appears artificiallystaged. Thematically and stylistically Díaz, Bradner, Glickman may godifferent ways. What they stand for is a critical interest in our reality.And in a photographic art that does not derive its possibilities from thecomputer. hmk

This year’s Fotofest was held from March 10 to April 23. The 14th edition of thefestival, which is supported by Leica Camera AG, is planned for the begin-ning of 2008. www.fotofest.org

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A R L E S / B E N E D I C T E L A S S A L L E

50 Leica World 2/2006

A R L E S

Rencontres d’Arles

SO WHERE THEN IS HAPPINESS TO BE FOUND?

What concerns the new generation of photographers in particular? The annual Rencontres d’Arles,

with their exhibitions and projections, and the portfolio reviews, now something of an institution,

are a perfect guide to current trends in the language of pictures and the choice of themes.

SHE DID NOT HAVE far to go to find her subject. Bénédicte Lassalle, ayoung Leica photographer in Paris and graduate of the private CentreIris photographers’ school, explored her grandmother’s kitchen. Thatdoes not sound exactly spectacular. But haven’t we learned from themovies how the mildest and gentlest of stories can trigger the mostdevastating emotional aftershock? What do we see? An artificial handon the kitchen table, the battered legs of which disappear into the blur.A kitchen clock on floral-pattern wallpaper, the hands pointing totwelve. A well-worn apron. A brush with a barcode that somebody for-got to remove. And, finally, a cracked sink you can tell has seen morethan its fair share of dirty dishes. These are signs of a life lived out,metaphors of a yesterday that knows no tomorrow. This was home tosomeone whose time is up. What was broken is no longer repaired,what was used up no longer replaced. The very objects breathe exhaus-tion. Some day, in the not too distant future, someone is bound tocome and dispose of these mute companions of an existence that was.For one last time the photographer has recorded a condition that isfamiliar and yet under threat: someone close, reflected only in the mir-ror of her belongings.

Bénédicte Lassalle was not, not yet, part of the official festival pro-gramme. But calling attention to young talents beyond the compass ofthe exhibitions, colloquia, workshops and projections – this, too, istypical of the Rencontres d’Arles: not by chance does the title includethe word ‘meetings’. Incidentally, Arles 2006 was marked by the pres-ence of those old ‘Compagnons de Route’, who had come at the invita-tion of Raymond Depardon, this year’s artistic director of the Rencon-tres d’Arles. Among them was Leica photographer Guy Le Querrec,whose multi-facetted work, where jazz meets reportage, many peoplehave yet to discover. Or Jean Gaumy, whose dramatic exploration ofthe sea must be counted among the most exceptional achievements ofcontemporary Leica photography. Or Claudine Doury, one of theyounger generation of dedicated Leica photographers: she, too, is asensitive observer of non-European cultures.

One of the traditional items on the agenda is the Leica Oskar Bar-nack Award, where the winner is presented, along with the finalists, atan evening projection. The winner of this year’s competition wasTomás Munita, who was born in Santiago (Chile) in 1975, proving oncemore that unknown photographers, especially the younger ones, havea real chance of winning this award. The only thing that counts is thequality in a coherent, self-contained series. ‘Kabul – Leaving the Shad-ows’ was the title Munita gave to a work created between March andNovember 2005, while he was working as a correspondent for TheAssociated Press news agency in Afghanistan. What he shows is every-day life in a country that is still far away from peace, but neverthelessalso enjoys its moments of civilian life. Munita consistently exploitsthe possibilities of modern colour photography, relying on the drama

of light to find atmospheric formulas that can be read as highly per-sonal statements in a pictorial language that sometimes borders onabstraction; statements also in opposition to the customised deluge ofpictures in our media. On the other hand, the intention of photogra-pher James Whitlow Delano, who lives in Japan, is to overcome theusual patterns of seeing. In a combination of the Leica M and highlysensitive black-and-white film, he has found the technical means forgetting closer, in pictorial terms, to the foreign country he has chosen.Japan, a cosmos between tradition and modernity, may for a start beread as a great conundrum. Delano’s complex, sometimes perfunctory,pictorial language emphasises the enigmatic nature of a culture that isboth fascinating and different, familiar and sometimes irritating.

What is happiness, or rather is anywhere its home? The ancientGreeks knew the way to paradise, which they called Arcadia and whichcould be found in the highlands of the Peloponnese. A place whosedaily challenges amounted to nothing more than tending sheep andwhich otherwise was free of any kind of earthly demands. The techno-logical era, accustomed to doing what is feasible, creates its ownuntimely paradises and Andreas Meichsner shows us what they looklike. The Berlin photographer, a graduate of the Hanover University ofApplied Sciences and Leica Oskar Barnack Award finalist, has found‘his’ Arcadia in Holland: a holiday village whose standardised architec-ture seems to regiment and control the activities of the people who livethere. Leisure time as an industrial product, holidays off the peg. Onecould call Meichsner’s work a conceptual report – nothing, as heemphasises, is staged. In short, work with a claim to being documen-tary that asks questions about individuality and conformity – withoutsuppressing the moment of irony. And one more finalist: Pierre Witt,41 years old, graduate of the École Nationale Louis Lumière in Paris anda freelance photographer since the late 80s. His photographic workfocuses on the exploration of traditional forms of living, or rather theircrisis, against the background of ever-increasing technicalisation,automation, urbanisation and globalisation. This is also true of theessay he submitted that examines the life, present and future, of themountain farmers in the Vanoise. Life in the Haute Savoie has alwaysbeen one of privation – and the work hard. Only that today nobody isprepared to do it any more. In Pierre Witt’s calm, sober pictures, theeye is drawn to a world on the way out and a life in the mountains – faraway from the ski slopes and the folklore. Incidentally, the response tothe projection from the traditionally critical Arles audience was almostfrenetic. Photography pure and simple. hmk

Entries are now being accepted for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2007.The deadline for entries is the 31st January. Further information online atwww.leica-camera.com

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