Sunday, January 22, 2012

Day 12 - Amsterdam - Foam & De Appel

It's not the twelfth day of Christmas, but the twelfth day of our trip. We're going to see the FOAM Photo Museum and De Appel, which is an institution for all things contemporary arts. They're both major institutions here in Holland and definitely worthy of our time. Sorry to say that FOAM doesn't allow photography, so there won't be many photos from there, but I'll see what I can do and you can click the links throughout this post to get to sites featuring imagery.

FOAM Photo Museum currently has two major exhibitions showing and they're both extraordinary. Then first galleries I visited contained an major retrospective of Joel Sternfeld, an American photographer working since the 1960's until the present day. Sternfeld was a pioneering force behind the initial fine art color photography movements and this is his first major retrospective in the Netherlands. The show covers work since the 1970's can pretty much be broken down into three separate exhibits: 1970's early work, including the legendary American Passing & Stranger Passing series' which has never been exhibited, American landscapes from the On This Sight series from 1993-96, and also the newer works, which were shot in large format and printed huge in scale. Very, very impressive to say the least. Check out the website HERE for much more information.

Also showing at FOAM is the Stanley Greene exhibit entitled Black Passport. The show features an extensive collection of work from Greene's war photographs, rock concert imagery and personal work from throughout his career. The imagery is both lush and tragic at once and evokes feelings of sadness, horror, longing, jubilations, eroticism and isn't without any slight sense of astonishment or wonder whereas context and content collide within the picture frame. A very poignant glimpse into the world of one of the world's most established war photographers if ever there were one. Check out FOAM's site on the exhibit HERE.

Also, not that you're visiting any time in the near future, but FOAM has one of the most amazing book stores as far as photo museums go. On had are every single issue of the institution's own publication, which is of course aptly titled FOAM. I myself purchased a copy of Joel Sternfild's Oxbow Archive photograph book that is quite simply luscious.

One Stanley Greene image from a contact sheet

Stanley Greene's quotes are scattered throughout the show

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