SAIC Camera Arts 2012: Photography

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

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Day 8 - Part 2 - Antwerp Foto Museum

We're at our first destination on a busy day in Antwerp, the FoMu, otherwise known as the Foto Museum Provicie Antwerpen...you can see why FoMu works so much better. On exhibit is a large showing of German photographer Peter Lindbergh's work. You're probably familiar with some of his work if you've been into fashion anytime during about the last thirty years. He's shot images of many supermodels to include Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, and Milla Jovovich.

Much of the work in the exhibit is pseudo-cinematic in its content and composition. Some of Lindbergh's contact sheets are on display in cases in the center of the galleries and comparisons can be drawn from the rolls of film he shot to the final images presented on the wall. For instance, there's several contact sheets of at least 16 images on each of Kate Moss that were edited down to a single image. This gives you a glimpse, however slight, into Lindbergh's working process and what he's looking for when he chooses a final image.

Also available for perusal are several galleries full of exhibition items that detail the rich history of photography. Included in these are several cases with cameras that showcase the technological advances in equipment since the invention of the art form in the 1800s. Photographs and contacts sheets from a large variety of names associated with photography over the ages are littered throughout the museum. I myself could have spent the day (and night) at the museum and had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the galleries...not really, but how's that for an image? Speaking of images, here are some of the previously promised pictures from this part of the Antwerp excursion.