Presque Île

Cyrille Weiner’s exhibition at villa Noailles

Following on from Joël Tettamanti, in 2004, Olivier Amsellem, in 2005, Erwan Frotin, in 2007 and Charles Fréger, in 2008, the Villa Noailles will exhibit, from the 18th of October to the 6th of December 2009, a new photographic commission awarded on this occasion to Cyrille Weiner. Weiner’s work has already been shown at the villa in 2005, during the exhibition Oui, avec plaisir, which was dedicated to the architect Patrick Bouchain, and for which he specially photographed a number of Bouchain’s works.

Presque île is the result of a two year residency at the villa Noailles. This series explores a protected area – the Presqu’Ile de Giens, the Iles d’Or, and the coastline of Hyères, Toulon and its suburbs – from the perspective of appropriation. Through these landscapes, the local installations, and the locations, Cyrille Weiner offers a poetic stroll, along with a reinterpretation of the imagery of the islands and the coastline.

A catalogue is co-published by villa Noailles and Archibooks.

A WALK ON THE EDGE

A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face. [Jorge Luis Borges]

For two years, the photographer made repeated, sporadic visits to the peninsula and the neighbouring land. He preferred to go before or after the high season, in chilly February, in still sensual June, or in September when tranquillity had returned. In Giens, he followed the footpaths that crisscross this rugged region. As he walked up the stony paths and down the slippery, ochre, clay slopes, snagged here and there with the roots of knotty pines, his destination was always the image. It would appear to him at a bend in a narrow passage through the tall yellowish grasses, where a walker was approaching, leaving the sea below, absorbed in their stroll and oblivious to the photographer’s lens; or behind a massive wall of pale rock, in the form of a small red back, bent towards the still distant sea. The image captured often shows a passenger on the move, in a landscape that seems everywhere to flaunt its magnificent indifference to this fleeting presence. Nature appears as sullen and harsh. It does not offer propitious spaces, adapted for human leisure; nor does it allow itself to be conquered; it lets itself be visited, gently touched by the walker.

The photographer invariably selects people who are submerged in some vast landscape, in the suffocating heat of the paths and the wooded areas dotted with slender tree trunks that they lead to, in the blue sky and the sea whose whitecaps endlessly draw the eye and feet. The person surveying the scene, marooned in the landscape, sometimes engaged in a family activity, often absorbed in the rapt contemplation of the infinite – alone or in a shared solitude – is offered what no property rights can lay claim to: the horizon. Their contemplation sometimes leads to delight when they surreptitiously glimpse the complicit echo of the sparkling water and the metallic glint of the mica on the sand. At this point, they know that, at the end of this narrow path, they have invented ‘their place’. No matter if they have to share it with others, providing they do not make a noise.

Returning on another day, they discover that the light has changed, the air is no longer the same and the atmosphere is different. As Emerson put it, ‘Nature always wears the colours of the spirit.’ No longer able to recognise their haven, they set off again, resuming their quest. They have to visit many shorelines before they can find their own. The edge of the world marks the beginning of the self. Henry David Thoreau wrote:

Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find
A thousand regions of your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them and be
Expert in home-cosmography.

During these successive visits, the photographer, while remaining at a distance, immersed himself in these chimeras the better to fix them. His images embrace the fantasies of the people in them, the other half that their eyes take in beyond the picture frame. He brings back from these trips not a topographical survey, but rather views of the mind, impressionistic drawings, which, one after the other, form the shifting map of a cosmography of the self.

[Raphaëlle Stopin, Excerpt from the catalogue Cyrille Weiner, Presque Île]

18 October – 15 janvier 2009
Opening – Saturday 17 October at 5:30 pm
Villa Noailles
Montée Noailles
83400 Hyères
France
T +33 4 98 08 01 98
contact@villanoailles-hyeres.com

Moonmilk

New serie by Ryan McGinley

Marcel (Hidden Reflection)

Wes (Falling) 2009

Tracy (Dripping) 2009

Blood Falls

Blue Breakdown

Gold Breakdown

Sean (Inside Heart)

Ryan McGinley

A shimmer of possibility

Paul Graham

A shimmer of Possibility 2004-2006

“Perhaps instead of standing by the river bank scooping out water, it’s better to immerse yourself in the current, and watch how the river comes up, flows smoothly around your presence, and gently reforms the other side like you were never there.” Paul Graham

Inspired by Chekhov’s short stories, Paul Graham’s a shimmer of possibility comprises 12 individual books, each volume a photographic short story of everyday life in today’s America. Most of these books contain small sequences of images, such as a man smoking a cigarette while he waits for a bus in Las Vegas, or a walk down a street in Boston on an autumn afternoon. Often two, three or four sequences intertwine in a single book, like separate but related lives co-existing in suburban America. Sometimes the quiet narrative breaks unexpectedly into a sublime moment – while a couple carry their shopping home in Texas a small child dances with a plastic bag in a garden; as a man cuts the grass in Pittsburgh it begins to rain and the low sun breaks through to illuminate every raindrop. These filmic haikus avoid the forceful summation we usually find in photography, shunning any tidy packaging of the world into perfect images. Instead, life simply flows around and past us while we stand and stare, quietly astonished by it’s beauty and grace. Whilst the twelve books are all an identical size, they vary in length from just a single photograph, to 60 pages of images made at one street intersection. The radical form of this multi volume book embraces the unique nature of Graham’s work, giving the flow of life precedence over conclusiveness, where nothing much happens, but nothing is foreclosed either, where everything shimmers with possibility.

steidl

Cristina’s History

Mikael Levin

CRISTINA’S HISTORY
Mikael Levin
Textes de Jonathan Boyarin, Jean-François Chevrier et Carlos Schwarz
Le Point Du Jour

A Jewish Itinirary from Poland to Africa

I met Cristina da Silva-Schwarc in Guinea-Bissau in 2003. Four generations back our ancestor, Isuchaar Szwarc,
a renowned Jewish scholar, lived in Zgierz, in central Poland. In his lifetime Isuchaar saw his small medieval town
transformed by industrialization. He died as the Nazis exterminated the Jewish communities. Isuchaar’s eldest son,
Samuel, settled in Lisbon. A successful mining engineer also known for his scholarship, Samuel lived in Portugal
during the waning decades of its colonial epoch. Samuel’s daughter Clara settled Portuguese Guinea in 1947. There
she and her husband played a prominent role in the anti-colonial movement. Since Guinea-Bissau’s independence,
Carlos, their youngest son, has devoted his life to the agricultural development of this impoverished nation. Cristina
is Carlos daughter.

I had always heard of this accomplished branch of my family. It occurred to me that their lives were an embodiment of modernity’s positivist belief in mobility and progress.

Jewish families are often characterized by patterns of dispersal and migration, patterns that have of late come to characterize the general world population. While my images are specific, my intent is to go beyond the narrow identifications of any particular community. It is the tension between the local and the global that interests me.
The condition of multiplicity, wandering, and exile, as shown in this story, suggests some principles for an alternative foundation of cultural identification, based on shared patterns of experience.

Untitled (from Cristina’s History – Zgierz), 2005.
#2005092
Silver print, 15 x 18 inches.
Edition of 5.

Untitled (from Cristina’s History – Bissau), 2003.
#2003092
Silver print, 15 x 18 inches.
Edition of 5.

Untitled (from Cristina’s History – Zgierz), 2005.
#2005064
Silver print, 15 x 18 inches.
Edition of 5.

Cristina`s History is presented as an installation consisting of three digital projections (Zgierz, Lisbon, Guinea-Bissau). In the rooms concerning Poland and Guinea-Bissau, two projectors are mounted back to back on a central pivot. The images rotate around the room (like the beams of a light house), stretching and bending on the walls as they are distorted by the shape of the room. In the Lisbon room, three projectors project the images on alternate walls. A voice-over narrates the story. Each room`s cycle lasts approximately 15 minutes and consists of about 60 images.

The catalog consists of three chapters (Zgierz, Lisbon, Guinea-Bissau) with the sequence of images, and essays by Jean Francois Chevrier, art historian and independent curator, Jonathan Boyarin, professor of modern Jewish studies, and Carlos Schwarz Da Silva, Levin’s cousin living in Guinea Bissau, director of the NGO Action for Development. Texts in French, English, and Portuguese. Format: 21.5 x 24 cm, 124 pages, 160 tricome images.

Psychogéographie

Antoine d’Agata

Choix des textes d’Antoine d’Agata et de Bruno Le Dantec
Postface de Bruno Le Dantec

Ces images ont été produites dans le cadre d’une commande publique associée au projet Euromed de Marseille. Cette vaste opération vise notamment à « reconfigurer » certains quartiers du centre-ville. La série est constituée, pour l’essentiel, de montages numériques où des jeunes de ces quartiers et ceux qui en seront les futurs usagers (des cadres du tertiaire en tenue de travail) apparaissent dans des espaces urbains déserts. Dans le livre, des phrases sont d’abord données comme anonymes avant d’être identifiées comme des citations d’habitants, de fonctionnaires ou d’hommes politiques. Certaines surprennent par la violence sociale, le plus souvent mêlée de racisme qu’elles illustrent. Inspiré, comme son titre l’indique, du premier situationnisme, Psychogéographie se situe, à travers ces multiples collages, dans la tradition du photomontage politique.

Antoine d’Agata est né en 1961 à Marseille. Membre de Magnum Photos, il a exposé récemment au Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Tokyo) et à la Photographers’ Gallery, (Londres). Outre De mala muerte, sa première publication en 1998, Le Point du Jour a édité Home Town (2002) et Manifeste (2005). En 2002, il a été accueilli en résidence et exposé à Cherbourg-Octeville. Il fait partie de l’exposition inaugurale du Point du Jour en 2008.

Le Point Du Jour éditeur
Format : 23 x 30 cm
80 pages
62 photographies en couleurs
ISBN : 2-912132-43-6

Dérive

Guy Debord and Situationist the Theory of the Derive, and Pyschogeography.

I recently came across the essay “The Poetics of the Derive” written by Vincent Kaufmann. Not being that familiar with Debord’s Derive, and only slightly informed of its predecessor from the Surrealist Andre Breton and his walks through Paris, it quickly raised many questions to tackle. Most specifically the idea of looking at the early photographic works of Eugene Atget, and his systematic walks through Paris cataloging the ephemeral Paris of his time. One which was being demolished to make way for the Modern streets and boulevards that Debord and the Situationist would later lament in the same manner Atget did before. Yet, how might this theoretical construct of the Derive apply to the large amount of contemporary urbanscape photography found in the United States. And even more interesting the actual activity the photographer performs in order to find these locations.

Debord’s Derive is not simple a walk through the streets of the city, of chance encounters. Instead one must move rapidly and decisively through the urban space, with intention. When possible the practice should not be done alone, but in groups of two or three. They should be aware of their surroundings, of the “…ecological analysis of the absolute or relative character of fissures in the urban network, of the role of microclimates, of distinct neighborhoods with no relation to administrative boundaries, and above all of the dominating action of centers of attraction…” (link to essay) Thus the most talented photographers who’s oeuvre includes the investigation of the urbanscape. The walk itself, the interaction of operator, camera, and site breaks down the normal relationship we have with public urban spaces. Their activity alone is the Derive.

Breaking the rules of theory to return to Eugen Atget melancholic catalog of a ghostly Paris that is no longer. His photographs present to us the sites slated to be demolished, of the concrete reality of the demolition not just of squares and houses, but of the intricate means and subtle variations of the daily social realities created and maintained through public works and layout.

The pyschogeography. Atget’s photographs of a forgotten urbanscapes now stand like so many rectangular ghost, an archive of ephemera, of power structures that have morphed, shifted, become temporal and translucent. They function as nostalgic tombstones, racked nicely in a file, viewed sequentially, ordered and precise. Are Atget’s photographs any less powerful than they were in his time period? Or does the contemporary viewer see them only as quaint post cards, a romantic bygone era of a dirtier, grimmer, Paris leaving out the pychogeography of that site and the site that will replace it?

If Atget’s photographs have lost their power to be anything more than romantic nostalgic post cards and coffee table books, then what of the contemporary photographers working within the urbanscape. Their photographs present tangible realities, visual stand ins of the power structures, specifically in the United States. Yet is the mere representation of these sites enough, does it go far enough to instigate more than just chance encounters for the viewer looking at the photographs. And what of the Modernist aesthetic formal qualities laid over these sites. Atget’s Paris is grimy, dark, moody. Contemporary urbanscape photographs are made to be as beautiful as they are not in reality. The photographers activity of finding these sites is the derive, the photograph itself is the pyschogeography, the questioning. But unlike the gritty ghost of Atget’s Paris, their contemporary formal presentation, high gloss, bright colours, fends off the questions raised by their derive. Instead the viewer is left with one word, nostalgia. The photograph becomes a representation of the United States political landscape and the power structures in play as it slowly turns and morphs. Instead of critical action and engagement, we mourn. The United States is changing and morphing its political and social power structures while its identity as super power declines. Its intial status symbols and sturctures that came to represent power have shifted, take on new meaning. Like so many tombstones the contemporary photographic formal aesthetic and their beautiful rendering of the dynamic and shifting urbanscape moots any possible critical interaction. Instead we are presented with lovely nostalgia, and pretty memento mori.

Grant W. Ray

http://grantray.blogspot.com/2009/06/debords-derive-and-pyschogeography.html

see also :

http://www.lepointdujour.eu/fr/psychogeographie

Tueur de Monde

Adrien Missika

2012 AD, photomontage, black pigment ink on paper, framed, ed.5, 2009

Colonial Quest 3, photomontage, black pigment ink on paper, framed, ed.5, 2009

L’Ile de Beton, photomontage, black pigment ink on paper, framed, ed.5, 2009

La Guerre des Ondes, photomontage, black pigment ink on paper, framed, ed.5, 2009

Le Gros Bloc Moderne, photomontage, black pigment ink on paper, framed, ed.5, 2009

Spacecraft 2, photomontage, black pigment ink on paper, framed, ed.5, 2009

Las Vegas Studio

Las Vegas Studio Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Las Vegas Studio.
Images from the Archive of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.
Edited by Hilar Stadler et Martino Stierli.
196 pages, 175 illustrations
Éditions Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich
ISBN 978-3-85881-717-4

In 1968, American architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour together with students from Yale University made Las Vegas the object of their research. The group spent three weeks in libraries, four days in Los Angeles and ten days in Las Vegas. In 1972, their findings were presented and interpreted in terms of a general architectural theory in the seminal publication Learning from Las Vegas. This study dealt above all with the symbolic dimension of architecture and the question of communication in the contemporary city. With their work, they decisively influenced the way the modern, commercial city was seen and also the direction of urbanistic research projects in both methodology and questions of representation.

Photography and film were important instruments for urban analysis in this «research studio.» They were equally means of argumentation and representation. The original material has since been stored in the archives of Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates in Philadelphia. The firm has now opened its archives. The exhibition «Las Vegas Studio» presents the images and films that were taken during the legendary 1968 Las Vegas research, making a selection available to the public for the first time. The visual material provides a spectacular demonstration of how Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour conceptualized the city in the medium of the image.

“Learning From Las Vegas” is arguably one of the most influential texts in theory of architecture of the 20th-century. Since its first publication in 1972 it has been reprinted again and again and translated to many languages. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s treatise had, and still has, lasting effect and is regarded until the present day as the starting singal of postmodernism in architecture and urban planning. The authors’ thesis and arguments are essentially based on the media of photography and film, on the countless pictures Venturi/Scott Brown and Steven Izenour took during their field research of 1968 in the city of Las Vegas. Despite of this fact all editions but the very first one of 1972 use only small black and white images of poor quality to illustrate the text. “Las Vegas Studio” is the first to present a large selection of these iconic images and film stills in colour, large format and first rate quality. The essays complement the pictures and investigate how Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour used images to contemplate the phenomenon of the modern city, and forge the link to the architectural practice of the past decades.

© Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates Inc., Philadelphia

Camera Obscura

Abelardo Morell

Camera Obscura Image of Santa Maria della Salute with Scaffolding in Palazzo Bedroom, 2007

Blurry Upright Camera Obscura Image of Santa Maria della Salute, 2004

Camera Obscura Image of the Coliseum inside Room #23 at the Hotel Gladiatori, Rome, 2007

Camera Obscura image of The Pantheon in Hotel Albergo Del Sole al Pantheon, Room # 111, Rome, Italy, 2008

Camera Obscura: View of the Grand Canal Looking Northeast From Room in Ca’ Foscari. Venice, Italy, 2008

Camera Obscura: View of Volta Del Canal in Palazzo Room Painted With Jungle Motif, Venice, Italy , 2008

Abelardo Morell

Carroll and sons

Google Street Photography

Google Street Photography competition

Postulate

Google Map offers a Street View from its website thanks to a smart camera. To see this street views, simply zoom on the map. Then you’ll be able to navigate inside this virtual space of the city and the country.

This competition is based on this incredible bank of images, and only pictures from Street View can be used for it.

The question of photography in this competition deals with images, mechanically taken. Technique is thought differently: what you need is not a camera but a computer screen.
For the first time, street photography doesn’t need the usual technical aspect of photography. Also, it deals only with wandering and observation. Free of a major restraint, this is a new proposition of representation, of an experimental practice.
http://www.risoom.com/

see also on Streetpulse :

http://streetpulse.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/googleart/