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27/5/2009

Four exhibitions

Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam

Marks of Honour
A Striking Library
28 May until 5 July 2009

Marks of Honour - A Striking Library is a homage to the photo book. The exhibition shows the inspiration a new generation of relevant photographers has had from the history of photography in the form of books. The photo book is a source for artistic inspiration and creative reference, especially since Robert Frank published his Les Américains in 1958. Photography in books has not only influenced collectors and curators, but also generations of photographers.

Thirteen international photographers were invited to choose a photo book, which was influential to the formation of their work, and to pay it artistically homage. All participating works contain the original photo book and its complementary 'homage'. Besides the original works the exhibition consists of multimedia presentations, photographs, drawings and reproductions. Foam is the first museum to present this stupendous library.

Participating artists:
Harvey Benge honours William Eggleston
Chris Coekin honours Duncker/Tuunanen
Peter Granser honours Robert Frank
Pieter Hugo honours Roland Barthes
Tiina Itkonen honours Pentti Sammallahti
Onaka Koji honours DaidoMoriyama
Jens Liebchen honours Anthony Hernandez
Michael Light honours Ansel Adams
Mark Power honours Stephen Shore
Matthew Sleeth honours Lars Tunbjörk
Alec Soth honours Andrea Modica
Jules Spinatsch honours Block 2008
Raimond Wouda honours Paul Shambroom

Marks of Honour was initiated by Markus Schaden (Schaden.com photobookshop, Cologne) and Willem van Zoetendaal (Van Zoetendaal Gallery, Amsterdam) in 2005. In 2005 there have been invited forty-one international photographers to choose a photo book which was influential to the formation of their work, and to pay it artistical homage. The resulting works have been shown in Amsterdam at Foam and at the Van Zoetendaal gallery. The basic concept remains the same. In Marks of Honour – A Striking Library there are only thirteen photographers participating, to obtain a higher focus. A catalogue will be published by Schaden.com. This project has been organized by Nina Poppe and Verena Loewenhaupt, supported by ArtBookCologne and Schaden.com photobookshop.

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Massimo Vitali
28 May until 9 September 2009

This spring, Amsterdam's photography museum Foam presents an exhibition by the famous Italian photographer Massimo Vitali (b. 1944, Como). Vitali rose to fame in the late 1990s with large-format colour photos of crowded Italian beaches. With his exceptional eye for detail, Vitali observes what ordinary people do. He is fascinated by recreation, leisure and the holiday atmosphere. He focuses above all on how people spend their free time today. The beach, clubs and mass tourism are just some of the themes that grab his attention. Foam presents this first exhibition of a large body of new work alongside earlier, more familiar pictures.

Vitali's huge photos are the result of a complex process. He often works with a classic camera, a Deardorff 11x14 inch - a wooden model from the 1950s - which he uses to record everything with meticulous precision. He enlarges these images digitally to create his astonishing panoramas. Vitali generally takes his pictures from a high vantage point. Using a large-format camera and taking an elevated perspective gives the artist an extremely wide view and at the same time an exceptionally detailed picture.

His latest pictures were taken in Sicily, Turkey and St Wolfgang Lake, Austria. These photos recall the traditional capricci landscape paintings (frivolous, playful pastoral scenes) of the 18th century - linked here to our contemporary focus on leisure. Vitali devotes months to finding the ideal locations with the perfect elements: the dramatic rock formations and ancient ruins and villages that remind him of those paintings.

Massimo Vitali was born in 1944 in Como (Italy). Following a traditional education he enrolled for a photography course at the London College of Printing. His career as a photojournalist began in the early 1960s. He has worked for numerous periodicals and agencies in Italy and Europe.

In the early 1980s, Vitali lost faith in the absolute power of photography to provide reality's subtleties. It prompted him to change his line of work and to move into the world of fiction and advertising as a cinematographer. Yet photography kept him in its grip and over the last ten years he has developed a new way of describing the world: photography as an expression of contemporary art. Vitali's work has appeared in countless museums and galleries in recent years, both in Europe and America.

Thanks to:
Brancolini Grimaldi Arte Contemporanea, Italy
Crown Gallery, Belgium
Deutsche Bank Collection
Galerie Ernst Hilger, Austria

This exhibition is made possible by Instituto Italiano di Cultura die Amsterdam and Excelsior Markiezenfabriek.

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Guy Tillim
Avenue Patrice Lumumba
28 May until 30 August 2009

Foam presents Avenue Patrice Lumumba, the latest project by South African photographer Guy Tillim. Many African towns have streets and squares named after Patrice Lumumba, the politician who won the Congolese elections in 1960, when the country gained independence from Belgium. He was one of Africa's first elected leaders and soon became an African icon. In Avenue Patrice Lumumba, Tillim focuses on the modernist architecture that emerged in countries like Congo, Mozambique, Madagascar, Angola and Benin shortly after they became independent. This architecture symbolised the sense of optimism that permeated the new, post-colonial era.

Today, many of these government buildings, luxury hotels and schools are decayed, empty or used for some other purpose. They have become monuments to long lost dreams. Tillim tries in Avenue Patrice Lumumba to come to terms with the process of change that has held Africa in its grip over the past fifty years.

At the celebrations marking the independence of Congo in June 1960, Patrice Lumumba gave a historic speech in the presence of the Belgian king, Boudewijn. He spoke plainly, rejecting the notion of a neo-colonial order in which the former imperial masters would retain indirect control of the country and its resources. Lumumba was assassinated in January 1961. In his place came Mobutu Sese Seko, who gained power in a coup d'etat supported by the West. While Mobutu emerged as a classic African dictator, Patrice Lumumba continued to embody the African ideal of true independence - a dream that has all but vanished in virtually every country. The dilapidated state of the modernist buildings that were erected in numerous African countries when they achieved independence, parallels the fate of that utopian ideal. Many have fallen into disrepair; others have since been given new functions.

Tillim photographed edifices in various African countries. His photos are clear, yet complex, and printed in large format. While Tillim concentrates on the buildings, these are anything but architectural pictures. First and foremost, they are photos about Africa, taken by a photographer who feels a strong connection with Africa and a personal involvement in modern African history. Tillim is not out to show the bankruptcy of the African dream. His oeuvre revolves around the constant processes of change in (southern) Africa. His native South Africa, for example, still feels the impact of the radical changes that followed the abolition of Apartheid. Yet above all, Tillim feels himself to be an African and so also focuses on changes that have affected other African countries: from colony to independence, from dictatorship to democracy, and from hope to despair. In a way, Tillim's oeuvre is an ongoing attempt to come to terms with the unstable, uncertain state of the African continent today.

Guy Tillim was able to create Avenue Patrice Lumumba as the first recipient of a Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography, granted by Harvard University's Peabody Museum. The project is also the subject of a book published by Prestel and available at Foam.

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Emilie Hudig
Foam_3h: Emilie Hudig - Control
28 May – 8 July 2009

In the first Foam_3h exhibition of 2009, Foam presents 'Control', a series by Emilie Hudig. 'Control' documents Hudig's struggle with Hodgkin's Disease, cancer of the lymph nodes. The result is a personal and candid series about a young mother's battle with illness.

In July 2007, then aged 34 and clean for thirteen years, Hudig was told that her disease had returned. She bought a small analogue camera and made a commitment to herself to take at least three photos a day, documenting her illness. It was like keeping a diary. Hudig, who earns her living as a documentary photographer, was able to use the camera to work through the feelings that she experienced. Taking photos helped her deal with her fears. For example, Hudig asked the assistant doctors to photograph her while she was having treatment. This transformed the atmosphere in the surgery and actually lifted her anxiety.

Emilie Hudig is interested in subjects that she can photograph from close proximity, yet which have a certain social relevance that transcends the personal. 'Control' conforms perfectly to her concept of telling the subject's story and in doing so approaching the subject as closely as possible. Yet this series is not about Hudig herself. Her aim is to provide an insight into the everyday life of a cancer patient. A life dominated in part by chemotherapy and treatments, yet still goes on.

Emilie Hudig (b. 1973, Rotterdam) graduated in 2007 in documentary photography at Fotoacademie Amsterdam. She has shown work in group exhibitions at LOODS 6, Amsterdam and Noorderlicht Galerie in Groningen. She has also worked as a photographer for magazines such as Nieuwe Revu and George. In 2007, she was nominated for the Photo Academy Award by Volkskrant Magazine, Standaard and FOAM, winning the exhibition prize.


Image: Massimo Vitali, Frigidadoferragosto, 2008. © the artist

Foam is sponsored by the BankGiroLoterij and the VandenEnde Foundation.

For information and visual material please contact Merel Kappelhoff (communications), e-mail merel@foam.nl or phone +31 (0)20 5516500

Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Keizersgracht 609 1017 DS Amsterdam
Open daily 10.00-18.00, Thurs/Fri 10.00-21.00
Tickets: €7.50 / info: +31 (0)20 5516500

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