calendario eventi  :: 

X

10/4/2014

Two exhibitions

The Photographers' Gallery, London

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014
11 April - 22 June 2014

The four artists shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014 are Alberto García-Alix, Jochen Lempert, Richard Mosse and Lorna Simpson. The winner will be announced at a special ceremony at The Photographers’ Gallery on 12 May 2014. Works by the shortlisted photographers will be shown in an exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery followed by its presentation at the Deutsche Börse headquarters in Frankfurt/Eschborn.

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014 is presented by The Photographers’ Gallery, London. The annual award of £30,000 rewards a living photographer, of any nationality, for a specific body of work in an exhibition or publication format, which has significantly contributed to photography in Europe between 1 October 2012 and 30 September 2013.

The four shortlisted artists have been nominated for the following projects:

Alberto García-Alix (b. 1956, Spain) is nominated for his publication Autorretrato/Selfportrait, La Fabrica Editorial (2013). The book features black and white self-portraits which offer an insight into the artist’s life over nearly four decades. These include the upheavals at the end of Franco’s dictatorship in the early 70s through newly gained liberties in the mid-80s and into the present day. The works reflect a life of both intimacy and excess, where photography is used to mediate experiences, fears, neuroses and inner battles. His tense and lyrical images blur – visually and metaphorically – the line between self-reflection and staged portraits. In his wider practice, García-Alix also combines photography with writing and video work.

Jochen Lempert (b. 1958, Germany) is nominated for his exhibition Jochen Lempert at Hamburger Kunsthalle (22 June – 29 Sept 2013). Originally trained as a biologist, Lempert has been using photography since the early 1990s to study humans and the natural world. His approach is scientific and poetic as well as humorous. Always working in black and white, his work engages with a diverse range of subjects and genres, ranging from everyday views, to abstracted details. Photographic series alternate with single pictures, highly contrasted images with almost blank papers, through which multiple links and subtle associations are woven.

Richard Mosse (b.1980, Ireland) is nominated for his exhibition The Enclave at Venice Biennale, Irish Pavilion (1 June – 24 November 2013). Mosse documents a haunting landscape touched by appalling human tragedy in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where 5.4 million people have died of war related causes since 1998. Shot on discontinued military surveillance film, the resulting imagery registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light, and renders the jungle warzone in disorienting psychedelic hues. At the project's heart are the points of failure of documentary photography. It is an attempt to find an alternate strategy to adequately communicate this complex and horrific cycle of violence.
Lorna Simpson (b. 1960, USA) is nominated for her exhibition Lorna Simpson (Retrospective) at Jeu de Paume, Paris (28 May - 1 September 2013). Simpson’s work links photography, text, video installations, most recently archival material and found objects. Emphasizing a conceptual and performative approach, she explores themes of gender, identity, culture, memory and body. Simpson works within the charged duality of past and present, word and image but also plays with the interplay between still and moving images.

The members of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014 jury are: Kate Bush,Curator; Jitka Hanzlová, Artist; Thomas Seelig, Director/Curator, Fotomuseum Winterthur; andAnne-Marie Beckmann, Curator, Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Germany. Brett Rogers, Director of The Photographers’ Gallery, is the non-voting Chair.

Brett Rogers, Director of The Photographers’ Gallery and Chair of the Jury said:

Each of this year’s nominees proposes compelling new ways to expand our thinking about the medium. Image and text underpin Lorna Simpson’s unique approach to interrogating gender and identity, whilst for Garcia-Alix, the camera becomes an extension of his psyche - ‘a way of seeing which is a way of being’. In drawing our attention to anthropomorphism, Jochen Lempert combines the precision of a scientist with the lyricism of a poet. For Richard Mosse, discontinued military surveillance film provides both the medium and the message, transforming the horror and brutality of war into a surreal form of documentary.

Frank Klaas, Managing Director Global Public Affairs, Deutsche Börse said: This year’s shortlist once again shows the vitality and broad variety of approaches to contemporary photography. We are impressed by the jury’s excellent selection and very much look forward to the 2014 exhibition– especially as it marks our 10th anniversary as sponsor of Europe’s most renowned photography prize.

---

Under The Influence: John Deakin and the Lure of Soho
11 Apr - 13 July 2014

The Photographers’ Gallery presents Under the Influence: John Deakin and the Lure of Soho, an exhibition exploring the hidden corners and colourful characters of 1950s and early 60s London Soho, as seen through the eyes of John Deakin (1912 - 1972).

Considered to be one of the greatest of postwar British photographers, Deakin was renowned for his penetrating portraits, haunting street scenes and striking fashion work. Though he flourished briefly at Vogue, it was the lure of nearby Soho with its pubs, clubs and subterranean watering holes that captured his interest most. Loved and loathed in equal measure by friends and drinking companions, Deakin was a legendary member of the quarter’s maverick crowd of artists, writers, poets and assorted characters and misfits. As its most famous chronicler with a camera, he is inextricably linked to Soho’s bohemian heyday in the two decades following the War.

The exhibition will feature approximately seventy framed photographs and paintings, including rarely seen and un-shown works, arranged into four thematic groups. The first section will depict images of Soho landscapes – West End lights, street signs, urban nightscapes and graffiti –and portraits of artisans, tradesmen and outsiders.

The second section will comprise portraits of Deakin’s circle of artists and friends. These include, among many others, the painters Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon; for whom he famously took portraits on commission to be used as source material for paintings. It also includes the writers Dylan Thomas, Daniel Farson and Jeffrey Bernard, the celebrated beauty and artist’s model Henrietta Moraes and Muriel Belcher, proprietor of the fabled drinking den The Colony Room.

With a keen ambition to be recognised as an artist, rather than a photographer, Deakin all but gave up photography in the 1960s in favour of painting. In contrast to the uncompromising quality of his photographic portraits, his paintings were characterised as simple, colourful and naive and met with limited success. Gathered together for the first time a selection of these paintings and collages will be on display in the third section of the exhibition. The fourth and final section will highlight some of Deakin’s fashion work and his little known early portraits of anonymous drag artists.

In addition to these the exhibition will also feature related ephemera such as Deakin’s dismissal letter from Vogue and subsequent correspondence with its editor and Deakin’s champion Audrey Withers, alongside a number of his magazine layouts.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication Under the Influence: John Deakin, Photography and the Lure of Soho, published by Art / Books in association with the John Deakin Archive and The Photographers’ Gallery. The book will include dozens of reproductions, letters and contact sheets as well as a text by exhibition curator and photographic historian Robin Muir, charting the exuberant, sometimes poignant, world of John Deakin’s Soho.

Image: Alberto García-Alix, My feminine side, 2002 © Alberto García-Alix

For press queries and to request further information and images please contact:
Inbal Mizrahi
Press Manager
E: inbal.mizrahi@tpg.org.uk
T: +44 (0) 207 087 9333

The Photographers' Gallery
16 - 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW
Mon – Sat 10.00 – 18.00, Thu 10.00 – 20.00, Sun 11.30 – 18.00
Admission is free

stampa

permanent link