Exhibition: Museum Kunstpalast Duesseldorf

Reiner Ruthenbeck.

Among the varied collection of modern and 19th Century traditional art was a collection of black and white photos.
One series depicted what looked like a cello concert, and behind the scenes  photos of people lying down with the cello, covering the cello up etc. Great photos of an audience enthralled in the music.
Another series, "Leben Mit Pop," was an interesting collection of photos taken around pop concerts from the early 1960's. The last photos depicted a demonstration which seems to have taken place in London. 

Exhibition: K21 Gallery Duesseldorf June 2013

This gallery had several photo exhibitions running.
Thomas Ruff: large prints of starscapes, this is a series of negatives he bought of the southern hemisphere that were taken for scientific research. The stars appear amazingly clearly and the size makes them seem as if you are looking right at the sky. Beautiful.

Christian Boltanski: Having seen one of his exhibitions during a photography course in London, I knew to expect the unexpected! On the walls, you see portraits enlarged from newspapers of both victims and perpetrators of crimes. A metal box of photos is under each photo which is lit individually by a small spot light. The room has a rack of linen sheets, giving an air of forensics. Nothing distinguishes the victims from the perpetrators, giving an eerie sense of uncertainty.

Bernd and Hilda Becher: This was well organised small portraits arranged in blocks of 3 down by 5 across depicting their industrial architecture series. The buildings are clear and have an odd sense of beauty about them.

Wolfgang Tilmans: This took up the whole lower ground floor of K21, and was more like a series of mini-exhibitions. It was hard to believe at times that all the photos were taken by the same person as there was such variation. There were large prints of the stars and moon, capturing large pictures of landscapes (mainly tree branches) emphasising colour. Some were merely a print of one colour on a large piece of photographic paper. Others were stark documentary style, some documenting male genitalia and sexual acts, as well as some portraits. 

Exhibition: New York Arbor, Brussels

This was an exhibition by Mitch Epstein, which I was in June. It was a series of trees, similar to Eugene Atget's work with trees in Paris taken at the start of the 20th Century. It was portrait-style placement of trees in New York and showed the diversity of the city - what is behind the trees and who is there. It showed the huge amount of urban development. There were texts about the roles of the trees and how necessary they are for human life.
The work was presented as fairly large prints, 3 large ones greet you as you enter. They do, however, lack some contrast and some are quite grey and lifeless depending on the subject.
As you go through and look at locations familiar from TV, it gives a different insight into each neighbourhood, by making us focus on the trees rather than people to depict it. 

Exhibitions: Deutsche Börse Prize and Studio Works

I went to the Photographer's gallery at the end of May and was pleased that I was there for the Deutsche Borse prize exhibiton as I know Mishka Henner from uni and wanted to see his work in print. There were 4 exhibitions in this part which I will describe individually.

War Primer 2 - Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin - this was from a book originally by Bertold Brecht from 1955, War Primer, which had photos, fragments and newspaper clippings with 4 line poems. The new edition layered google search results for the poems over the originals, modernising the book and giving it a complete new look. I am not particularly interested in War photography, but enjoyed seeing how this project had been 'modernised.'

No Mans Land - Mishka Henner was an extremely though provoking set of images, of women in Southern European streets. He used google street view to take the photos of women as they waited on 'street corners.' He researched sites talking about where prostitutes can be found, then used street view to find them. Looking at the images and knowing how they have been taken leads to a real sense of voyeurism, there is a definitive sense that these images could not have been taken by someone using a camera. This also raises issues of image taking and privacy, and CCTV too. I wonder if these women have any idea about it and think this is a great social experiment with a type of photography that has been made possible with new technology.

What Happened - Great Britain 1970-1990 by Chris Killip was a set of black and white images of working people in the North of England. The photographer immersed himself in the communities and by doing so was able to document the lives of these people in striking images. Nothing is hidden from the camera it seems, the images show how tough life was for these people.

The Afronauts by Christina de Middel was a fun take on documenting the story of Zambia's space programme, which started in 1964. The portraits showed the people involved, often wearing their space helmets in the images, or a version of a space helmet in some cases.

The other exhibition in the gallery was Studio Works by Claire Aho. This was a real selection of her studio shots, some taken for ads and magazines, some showing originals before they were cropped for use, which showed how images are really taken for these situations. This gave us an idea of the process involved. Some images also showed the lighting set ups, and many displayed a great sense of humour. 

Exhibition: Travel with Me

I saw this exhibition and met the photographers at Lancaster Children's Centre in May. First I was shown original books from the 1980's where traveller children had been given disposable cameras to depict their life, to show others how they lived and educate them. Someone at the Children's Centre found albums which had space for recording a voice over for each numbered photo. They gave cameras to children living on traveller sites all over Lancaster. The result was an eclectic mix of ages represented and varying aspects of their lives shown in print. It was interesting to see what they do both on and off site, setting up travelling circuses for example. Hearing them speak about their images was inspiring. They were also given a party to celebrate their work, local librarians and teachers were invited. They decorated covers to keep their work in and it was great to see how proudly they did this. 

Exhibition: portraits

This exhibition was at Bridport medical practice. There were some very striking black and white images of people in various situations, mainly outside. They did not appear to have been taken in the UK, but as there was no information to be found I am still not sure where they were from! Some images were on what appeared to be farms, with animals in the back or foreground (llamas appeared in one!). The photos were very detailed and high contrast. I initially wanted to find out more information about where they were taken but then realised that not having the information was a little more exciting, we can draw our own conclusions. 

Exhibition: Cold Comfort, Kota Kinabalu

I saw this exhibition in January at Suria Mall in KK. The photos were taken by Mathias Heng, and were displayed by Leica. The photos documented 5 visits to Japan, where the author visited to document the lives of local people following the 2011 Tsunami. The photos gave an insight into what the people were going through and showed also how some areas are now being rebuilt as people start to put their lives back together. The suffering was evident as was the resilience of people from the images. 

Nikon club Photo Search and Exhibition - Oct

I went to KK for the Photo Search run by Nikon. This was lots of fun - groups of 3 were given 35 cryptic clues to solve and each member had to take a photo of the answer. The weather sucked, it rained which was nice from a temperature point of view, but not good from a having to put your camera away all the time point of view! We had 3 hours.....it was pretty exhausting! We decided to do the clues backwards to keep away from the crowds. We arrived back at base pretty exhausted but were given lunch which was a nice touch. We then downloaded all the images....and waited a few days for the results.

The opening of the Nikon Sabah exhibition was later that day, which was great to see. Club members around Sabah had images depicting various places and the wildlife that lives there. It was a rare opportunity to actually look at images in this way, normally I only have the internet to look at! I also got to talk to a few of the photographers with work on display.