Joakim Eskildsen
dal 24/4/2013 al 31/5/2013
Segnalato da
24/4/2013
Joakim Eskildsen
Gallery Taik, Berlin
These series represent two different approaches in Eskildsen's work. While 'American Realities' was initiated through a project with Time Magazine and took less than a year to complete, 'Home Works' is again one of the artist's long-term projects, like his well-known series The Roma Journeys.
Gallery TAIK is thrilled to present a first insight to Joakim Eskildsen's most recent series
American Realities (2011) and Home Works (in progress since 2005) in Berlin. These series
represent two different approaches in Eskildsen's work. While American Realities was initiated
through a project with TIME Magazine and took less than a year to complete, Home Works is
again one of the artist's long-term projects, like his well-known series The Roma Journeys.
In 2011, Kira Pollack, Director of Photography at TIME Magazine, commissioned Eskildsen to
capture the growing crisis in the U.S. During the time-span of seven months, he traveled through
New York, California, Louisiana, South Dakota and Georgia, places that according to census data
have the highest poverty rate. The outcome is American Realities, a stunning body of work in
which Eskildsen has managed to make personal portraits of people living below the poverty line
to many of whom the myth of the American Dream had lost its raison d’être. The German
publishing house Steidl will launch a book accompanying the series in 2013.
The ongoing project Home Works is sort of an artistic homecoming for Eskildsen who, after
traveling the world for numerous photographic projects, turned back to his beginnings, and to the
things that had so much inspired him when he first started taking pictures around his home at the
age of 14. Already in those earliest photographs, Eskildsen shows a sensitivity for light and
certain weather conditions that his work is still known for today. Since the beginning of the project
in 2005, Eskildsen, worked on the series around six homes in three countries, and became father
of a son and a daughter who naturally become part of the project as well.
Joakim Eskildsen was born 1971 in Copenhagen, Denmark. As an MA student at the University of Art and Design
Helsinki (renamed Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2011), he studied with the well-known
Finnish artists Pentti Sammallahti and Jyrki Parantainen. His publications, in which he often collaborates with writer Cia
Rinne, include Nordic Signs (1995), Bluetide (1997), iChickenMoon (1999), the portfolio al-Madina (2002, with Pentti
Sammallahti and Kristoffer Albrecht) as well as The Roma Journeys (2007, Steidl), which was awarded with the
Amilcare Ponchielli Award, Deutscher Fotobuchpreis, the Otto Pankok Promotion Prize, and the David Octavius Hill
medal. Home Works will be published in 2015 alongside the third edition of The Roma Journeys.
Image: Madai Nunez and Santamaria Brissa Fresno, California, 2011. Pigment print, 44 x 52 cm / 88 x 104 cm, framed
Opening Thursday, April 25, 2013, 7–9 pm
Gallery Taik
Bergstr. 22
Free Admission