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30/6/2011

Gregory Crewdson - Sibylle Bergemann

C/O Berlin - International Forum for Visual Dialogues, Berlin

Gregory Crewdson . In a Lonely Place

C/O Berlin, International Forum For Visual Dialogues, is pleased to present the exhibition In a Lonely Place, featuring three series of the work of American photographer Gregory Crewdson.

Beneath the Roses, Crewdson’s most iconic series, is set in anonymous American suburbs. There are homes strewn with garbage, streets devoid of life, train tracks overgrown with weeds, and fallen-down houses engulfed in flames. The traces of industrialization and civilization appear as ruins. Nature has taken over—but these places are neither idyllic nor romantic. People are shown almost impassively stumbling through menacing landscapes without any sense of orientation. They avoid meeting each other’s gazes, not reacting to this apocalyptic speechlessness. Although no immediate violence can be seen, its presence is palpable everywhere. Emptiness, loneliness, stasis, paranoia—the elaborately staged photographs of Crewdson turn the darker sides of the American dream inside out, enacting a fine line between normality and horror.

In contrast to the classic thriller, Crewdson’s detailed tableaux depict people who are making no effort to change anything, to defend themselves, or even to save their own lives. Resigned to the mysteries of everyday life, they are left indifferent and empty; they seem as if they are on automatic pilot. The hyperrealism of these images makes the all-encompassing sense of alienation that pervades them all the more vexing and disquieting. It unmasks the middle- class American lifestyle and the typical suburban idyll as hellish nightmares. Crewdson’s focus is not on social mobility but on the spiritual abysses that are repressed from consciousness. In his enigmatic photographs, the uncanny is neither new nor strange, but familiar—as close as next door.

Crewdson’s large-format photographs are staged antinarratives. The beginnings and endings of the stories lie outside the narrative frame, leaving events in a permanent state of limbo, forever unresolved. Each clue to the content leads to further questions. Embracing this broadly conceived approach to the art of narrative, Crewdson carries on the tradition of staged photography that emerged as one of the most important forms of contemporary photographic expression since Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall. His work is also strongly influenced by the visual cosmos of the Holly- wood film, particularly the themes and imagery of David Lynch and Steven Spielberg.

At the same time, Crewdson deliberately employs cinematic techniques that break down the mystique of authenticity and documentary that surrounds the medium of photography to this day. To do this requires enormous effort— scenery is built, a huge staff is employed, ranging from lighting technicians to make-up artists, and film stars. It takes a crew of as many as 150 people working for several days to create Crewdson’s dream-like visions. After shooting, he manipulates the photographs on the computer, copying and superimposing elements over each other to achieve a uniform depth of field and multidimensionality. This technique gives rise to images that emanate a surreal, supernatu- ral suggestive power that holds the viewer in its thrall.

In the series Sanctuary, Crewdson focuses on the scenographic architecture, thus bringing to light the techniques of illusion that he had used or created for his sets. These are documentary photographs taken on the empty backlots of Cinecittá Studios, in Rome, that show the hidden life of film and the artifacts left behind after a production— structu- res supporting facades, scaffolding, alleyways overgrown with weeds, crumbling statues, old graffiti, and puddles of water. The black and white photographs show a quiet, unreal world devoid of life in the intense light of daybreak and of nightfall.

Fireflies, the earliest made series in this exhibition, in contrast, consists of small monochrome photographs that mark a radical departure from the style of his large-format cinematographic photographs. The images captivate the viewer with their carefully composed lighting and intense colors. Their subject matter continues in the vein of Crewdson’s previous oeuvre—his fascination with the ordinary landscape, his use of light as a narrative element, and his exploration of nature as a psychological mystery.

Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1962. The son of a psychoanalyst, he studied at SUNY Purchase and at Yale University. In the early 1990s, he first gained widespread acclaim with his series, Natural Won- der, in which he portrays nature as a magical, mythic place. Since 1994 he has been a Professor of Photography at Yale University. The renowned Whitney Museum of American Art as well as the Guggenheim Museum in New York have held major exhibitions of his work in recent years.

C/O Berlin will be presenting approximately 90 large-format photographs from the series Fireflies (1996), Beneath the Roses (2003 to 2007), and Sanctuary (2010). The Kulturhuset in Stockholm and The Royal Library/National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen are partners in the exhibition.

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Sibylle Bergemann . Polaroids

"It’s the fringes of the world that interest me, not its center. The noninterchangeable is my concern. When there is something in faces or landscapes that doesn’t quite fit"
(Sibylle Bergemann)

The present moment is fleeting, fragile, intimate, and difficult to hold on to. The instant and eternity—nowhere are they so close together as in the Polaroid, the instant photo that is ephemeral precisely because it fades with time. Sibylle Bergemann used this medium with lyricism and empathy to capture the contours of the moment, and the result is a body of dreamlike and sensitive documentary works that take a stand against forgetfulness. They appear as if enveloped in a kind of veil, eluding temporal or spatial classification. Bergemann’s photographs are multilayered—they speak of destinies, of the passage of time, of surrounding circumstances. As such, one can see and understand them again and again anew. The oscillation between the various levels and the quality of transience are unmistakable in all her photographs—from the melancholy black-and-white photographs of Berlin in the 1960s to the faded color Polaroids, and finally to the color prints taken after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The way Bergemann took a photograph revealed her attitude toward life: she was infinitely patient, calm, and attentive. Sibylle Bergemann took each person who stood before her camera seriously. She never embarrassed them by exposing their weaknesses or flaws. This allowed her to develop an exceptional intimacy with those she photographed. At the same time, however, she subtly played with the viewer’s gaze, with the feelings of desire and nostalgia. Sibylle Bergemann understood the photograph not just as a depiction of reality, but above all as a medium that can shed light on the broader contexts of current realities, that can interpret them and take a stand. As a result, the details in her images are themselves symbolic, revealing stories and symbols in their delicate nuances.

In this exhibition, C/O Berlin presents 140 Polaroids by Sibylle Bergemann, making this the first time that such a large number of these unique works have been shown publicly. The broad scope of the exhibition offers a distinctive overview of the work of one of the most important female photographers to have come out of Germany, paying homage to the artist, who passed away in November 2010. A catalog published by Hatje Cantz will accompany the exhibition.

Image: Gregory Crewdson

Opening: Friday, July 1, 2011, 7 pm
Cinema: Friday, July 1, 9.30 pm. Take a Picture - Die Fotografin Sibylle Bergemann
A production by It Works! Medien in coproduction with ZDF/ Arte, DEFA-Stiftung and Agentur OSTKREUZ

C/O Berlin
International Forum For Visual Dialogues
Oranienburger Straße 35/36, Berlin
Opening hours: daily, 11 a.m to 8 p.m
Admission 10 Euro, reduced 5 Euro

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