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15/12/2011

Three Exhibitions

Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam

Stanley Greene
Black Passport

16 December 2011 - 5 February 2012

Foam presents Black Passport, a project by and about the American conflict photographer Stanley Greene (New York, 1949). Black Passport shows photos of conflicts and disasters combined with photos of Greene's private life. The result is a revealing portrait of a photographer who is addicted to the adrenaline rush of being on the move, but at the same time realises the sacrifices he makes in his personal life. Stanley Greene has photographed in regions such as Chechnya, Iraq, Rwanda and Sudan and is one of the founders of the international photo agency NOOR.

Every day, newspapers and magazines are filled with photos of war, oppression and violence. The photographer that enables us to watch what is happening in the rest of the world from the safety of our own homes, however, usually remains invisible. This is not the case in Black Passport, the biography of war photographer Stanley Greene, which appeared in book form in 2009 and will be exhibited in Foam starting on 16 December. Photos of conflict and disaster regions such as Rwanda, Sudan, Chechnya and Iraq are alternated with photos from the private life of Stanley Greene: photos of Paris and many women. Slide shows will also be presented, interspersed with texts from the book. Greene's voice resounds through the exhibition space - he is disconcertingly frank: 'I think you can only keep positive for eight years. If you stay at it longer than that, you turn. And not into a beautiful butterfly.'

Just as Stanley Greene, visitors to the exhibition are poised between the safety of Western life and the horrors of foreign wars. And it is precisely this juxtaposition that causes these photos to stir us more than the stream of bad-news images that inundate us daily. In addition, Black Passport is a fascinating story about what it is like to be a war photographer. Why does someone choose to be continually confronted with death and misery? Is it an escape from everyday reality and a craving for adventure?

Stanley Greene has photographed in the former Soviet Union, Central America, Asia and the Middle East. His work has appeared in publications including Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, Stern and Paris Match. He has won various World Press Awards and in 2004 the W. Eugene Smith Award. Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003 was published in 2004 and his book Black Passport in 2009. Greene is one of the founders of the Amsterdam-based international photo agency NOOR.

The exhibition has been produced in close cooperation with Teun van der Heijden (www. heijdenskarwei.com), the compiler and designer of Stanley Greene's book, Black Passport. Van der Heijden is a graphic designer and has for many years worked with World Press Photo and renowned international photographers.

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Joel Sternfeld
Color Photographs since 1970

16 December 2011 - 14 March 2012

In mid-December Foam will present the first major retrospective exhibition in the Netherlands of the work of Joel Sternfeld (1944, New York), one of the pioneers of color photography. Foam will be showing more than one hundred photos from ten different series in an exhibition spanning two floors. A highlight is Sternfeld's early work from the 1970s, which has never been previously exhibited. A large selection from famed series such as American Prospects, the result of his legendary journey through the United States, and Stranger Passing will also be on show. A constant factor in his work is his native land America, its inhabitants and the traces left by people on the landscape. With a subtle feeling for irony and an exceptional feeling for color, Sternfeld offers us an image of daily life in America over the last three decades.

New Color Photography
Along with William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, Sternfeld saw to it that colour photography became a respected artistic medium in the 1970s. Until that time, colour was used widely in advertising and amateur photography, but was rarely seen in museums and galleries. Sternfeld was influenced by the color theory of the Bauhaus and by the work of William Eggleston, whose exhibition in MoMA in 1976 marked the official acceptance of colour photography in the art world.

Early Work
A typical 'street photographer' style can be recognized in Sternfeld's early and as yet unknown work, using a 35mm camera, to record everyday life in America. This work already contained the characteristics that made his later work so successful. In 1978, Joel Sternfeld began a long journey through the United States. For eight years he crisscrossed his homeland and recorded everything he encountered with his large-format camera. His investigation into the landscape and people moving within it resulted in the American Prospects series (1979-1983). In Stranger Passing (1987-2000) Sternfeld concentrated on people. He photographed them in an unambiguous way: from the same distance and looking directly into the camera. This series is a portrait of a society, comparable to the magnum opus of August Sander in the early twentieth century. Just as in American Prospect, there is evidence of a light absurdism as well as sympathy for those being portrayed.

The American Landscape
For the On This Site series (1993-1996), Sternfeld photographed urban and rural locations which were at first glance unremarkable. In the accompanying text, however, it becomes clear that these were the locations of 'crime passionnels', racial violence and stabbings. The photos thus acquire an entirely different connotation. In Sweet Earth (1993-2005) Sternfeld shows alternative lifestyles and communities which have arisen in America over the past two centuries. He travelled to the homes and communities of people that do not fit into conventional lifestyles and instead pursue another way of life. In Oxbow Archive (2005-2007) Sternfeld depicts the effects of the changing seasons on the landscape and how human behaviour influences nature.

Slide Show
With the projects Treading on Kings (2001), on the G8 conference in Genoa, and When It Changed (2005), on the climate conference in Montreal, Sternfeld's work is becoming more political and strident. These projects will be shown in slide shows.

Biography
Joel Sternfeld lives and works in New York. He has received a number of major awards during his career, such as the Citygroup Photography Prize (2004) and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1978 and 1982). The work of Joel Sternfeld has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art and Luhring Augustine in New York. His work is included in major international collections such as the Folkwang Museum (Essen), Fotomuseum Winterthur, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Victoria and Albert Museum (London) and The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York). Since the start of his career, Sternfeld has considered photography books more important than exhibitions of his work. He has published eleven books in the past twenty years, which are now greatly sought after by collectors.

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Sara-Lena Maierhofer
Dear Clark

16 December 2011 - 08 February 2012

What drives a person to constantly take on a new personality? What characterises a man who systematically avoids being recognised as himself? In Foam 3h, Sara-Lena Maierhofer (1982, Germany) shows her investigation into the life and the lies of swindler and fraud Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, alias Clark Rockefeller.

In Dear Clark, Sara-Lena Maierhofer tries to approach a swindler and fraud whose life has consisted of carefully constructing and then erasing his identity. After she fails in convincing the man to meet with her personally, she decides to study him from a distance. Step by step, she becomes better acquainted with her subject: his appearance, his idiosyncrasies, his intentions.

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter (1961) was born in Germany and moved to America to study as a teenager. Since that time he has used many aliases and passed himself off as a success (varying from presenter to government advisor). In Boston he posed as Clark Rockefeller, related to the chic Rockefeller family, and married Sandra Boss, a woman from a wealthy family. Christiaan lived in luxury throughout their twelve-year marriage, while his wife supported him. When Sandra discovered the extent of her husband's deceptions, she filed for divorce. Following the divorce, Christian lost custody of his daughter and kidnapped her, whereupon Sandra hired a private investigator who exposed Christian's past. Christian was arrested shortly after.

Maierhofer had read about Christian in the Süd-Deutsche Zeitung newspaper; she was fascinated and became engrossed in his life. His deceit captivated her, perhaps because she had experienced that in photography, too, the dividing line between fiction and reality is exceedingly fine. Maierhofer's aim is to unmask photography as a lie in itself.

The project Dear Clark, consists of found photographs and her own photos, as well as videos and documents. Maierhofer has divided the story into a number of chapters such as De Introductie [The Introduction], De Belofte [The Promise], De Leugen [The Lie], etc. This way the photographer adds context to the storyline and it becomes an exemplary story for the many other swindlers.

Sara-Lena Maierhofer (Freudenstadt, 1982) studied photography and media art at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld. In 2011 she won the Gute Aussichten Award for New Photography 2011/2012.
Foam is supported by BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, Delta Lloyd and the VandenEnde Foundation.


For more information and visual material please contact the Communications department, e-mail foam@foam.org or phone +31 20 5516500.

Image: Stanley Greene, Black Passport

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