V O G U E | Diaspora: Photography Exhibition

Showing posts with label Photography Exhibition. Show all posts

Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou: Egungun Project. A Sumptuous Masquerade

Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou (b.1965) is one of the pre-eminent photographers from the Republic of Benin, based in the capital Porto Novo close to the Nigerian border. Trained by his father, the world-renowned photographer Joseph Moise Agbodjelou (1912-2000), Leonce Raphael has since developed his own individual style in contemporary and innovative ways. Shooting with medium format in an outdoor studio, his recent project has focused on the Egungun masqueraders.

Egungun are both named and unnamed ancestral forbears of Yoruba-speaking lineages, found in the republic of Benin and in the Yoruba kingdoms of south-Western Nigeria. Beginning in the 11th to 14th centuries a.d., the masqueraders appear at funeral to mark and guide the passage of the deceased to the spirit world. Annual festivals are held in Yoruba-speaking communities at the beginning of the rainy season to cleanse the town, but Egungun can also appear at any time to avert major misfortune or affliction that threatens the local community. They occupy a range of roles that vary from recent deceased and historical forbears, to acting as community executioners of criminals and witches. Less important and junior performers, such as onidan (miracle workers) oloki (acrobats) and alaba (wearers of cloth) cam also entertain the onlookers with magical feats and the sumptuousness of visual display.
~~Dr Charles Gore, Senior Lecturer in the History of African Art, School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London

Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou explores these dynamic tensions in a major series of individual portraits of Egungun that capture both their individual personalities and quirks while making out their power and elusiveness as liminal visitors from the world of the dead.

Agbodjelou has received international recognition for his portrait photography. This new series - acquired by major private collections worldwide - firmly establishes him as preeminent emerging artist.

Egungun Project is currently on view at Jack Bell Gallery, London
November 17 - December 17, 2011

© Jack Bell Gallery

Courtesy Jack Bell Gallery, London

Egungun Project

November 17 - December 17 2011
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Cooper & Gorfer: " My Quiet of Gold," a journey in rural Kyrgyzstan

Cooper & Gorfer consists of the two artists Sarah Cooper (USA, 1974) and Nina Gorfer (Austria, 1979). With their backgrounds in art, architecture, graphic design and photography, they began their collaboration in 2006. Their work belongs to a narrative tradition within photography existing at the intersection of contemporary photography and 18th and 19th century painting. Place and story are the catalysts of their work, transforming narrative and memories into images that are digitally processed to create painterly collages.

For their exhibition My Quiet of Gold, Cooper and Gorfer traveled to the rural areas of Kyrgyzstan to collect sagas and stories in conversations and interviews with local inhabitants. Out of these tales, the duo created striking photographic portraits that go far beyond mere documentation to tell and visually interpret romantic-melancholy stories of love, sorrow, and betrayal in a completely new and non-linear ways.

"Like the portrait in Oscar Wilde's novel 'The Picture of Dorian Grey', our images show more than just an objective view of the person portrayed. Instead, they also depict something we cannot see - the past, the insubstantial and intangible, where the life and sentiment of the person photographed are woven together with our perception and experience of the moment. In the end, our pictures are the stories' beautiful remains."
~~ Cooper & Gorfer

Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer live and work in Gothenburg, Sweden.

My Quiet of Gold is an exhibition from the renowned Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg, and is currently on view at Gestalten Space, Berlin. A book of the same name has also been published, and is available through the gallery.

My Quiet of Gold

© Cooper & Gorfer, Shola and the Cat, 2010

© Cooper & Gorfer, Shola and Islam in a Field of Newly Planted Trees, 2010

© Cooper & Gorfer, Nazgul Holding Wheat in Green, 2010

© Cooper & Gorfer, Blue Shola, 2011

© Cooper & Gorfer, Brothers and Arms, 2011

© Cooper & Gorfer, 1916 - The childline, 2011

© Cooper & Gorfer, The Carpet Picture, 2011

© Cooper & Gorfer, Red Shola Standing, 2011

Courtesy Cooper & Gorfer / Gestalten Space, Berlin

My Quiet of Gold

Gestalten Space, Berlin, Germany

October 27 - November 27, 2011
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Leonardo Vecchiarelli: La Grande Transizione, Women Warriors meet Oriental Empresses

The Grande Transizione is a cycle all put together like an armed battalion. There are thirty pictures of women warriors, dressed and decorated with the keen eye of a samurai preparing for battle, inspired by oriental empresses. Hidden amongst these females is a single male figure, the artist himself, Leonardo Vecchiarelli.

Each portrait has a title extracted from the literary and mythical culture of the Orient: the shaman, the samurai woman, the creator of human kind, the temple of purity... Every image has complex meanings and symbolisms all woven together. Women assume the role of mediators and with determination, authority, intuition and strength, can help us to renew our lost sense of belonging.

As a young boy, Leonardo Vecchiarelli found his calling in cinematography, specializing in photography and choreography at the "Cinematic Devises School" of Roberto Rossellini and the "National Academy of dramatic Art" Silvio D'Amico in Rome. Former assistant to Gianpaolo Barbieri, Steven Klein and to Douglas Kirkland, the Italian born artist started working with magazines including Harper's Bazaar, French Vogue, German Glamour, Italian Vogue and more...
Leonardo photographed international campaigns, such as Trussardi, Fay by Tod's, Faber, Maria Buccellati among others.
The Grande Transizione is currently on exhibit at Studio Guastalla Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Milan.

© Leonardo Vecchiarelli

Jo Sen'shi - Bene (Maria Buccellati), 2011

© Leonardo Vecchiarelli

Bui Long (Nicoletta Fiorucci)

© Leonardo Vecchiarelli

Gui'zu'De (Mariasole Brivio Sforza)

© Leonardo Vecchiarelli

Isanami (Riyo Mori)

© Leonardo Vecchiarelli

Shibui (Elizabeth Di Stefano)

© Leonardo Vecchiarelli

Tao (Federica Pesce)

© Leonardo Vecchiarelli

Xi Wa'ng Mu (Lucilla Bonaccorsi Beccaria)

© Leonardo Vecchiarelli

Yacasa (Cristina Estrada Juffali)

© Leonardo Vecchiarelli

Yua'n Liu (Olimpia Colonna)

Courtesy Leonardo Vecchiarelli / Studio Guastalla Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Milan

La Grande Transizione

October 11 - November 12, 2011
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Art meets Conservation: "On this Earth, A Shadow Falls" by Nick Brandt

For Nick Brandt, the animals are far more than subjects of his camera. The UK photographer has dedicated his life to depicting Africa's animals and nature. Through his craft he grants us an intimate glance into the private world of these gentle beasts. It began in 1995 when Brandt was directing a music video for Michael Jackson in Tanzania, that he fell in love with the country's flora and fauna.

Nick Brandt began photographing in 2001 and, in 2003 he decided to abandon his successful directing career in order to dedicate himself full-time to photographing African animals. Brandt's work is unique in its expression. His aesthetically sublime images tell an important story. Poaching, increased human encroachment, deforestation and global warming threaten the future of the natural habitat of Africa's animal population.

In September 2010, Brandt established the Big Life Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of Africa's wildlife and ecosystems. The rangers holding the tusks of killed elephants in the photos below are 22 of the now 100+ of Big Life Foundation's rangers. All the tusks belong to elephants killed at the hands of man in the six years prior to the formation of Big Life. Since then, their presence in the areas they cover within the Amboseli ecosystem has already resulted in less than a year in a dramatic reduction in poaching within the region.

"On this Earth, A Shadow Falls" is currently on view at Fotografiska in Stockholm. The 65 photographs in the exhibition represent Nick Brandt's ongoing photographic project, which is presented in a trilogy of books that memorializes the vanishing grandeur of the natural world of East Africa. Currently work in progress, the images from the final part of the trilogy will reveal a darker vision of this diminishing world.

"To me, every creature, human or non human, has an equal right to live, and this feeling, this belief that every animal and I are equal, affects me every time I frame an animal in my camera."
~~ Nick Brandt

"On this Earth, A Shadow Falls"

Elephant Drinking, Amboseli 2007. Killed By Poachers, 2009

Ranger with Tusks of Killed Elephant, Amboseli 2011

© Nick Brandt

Elephants Walking Through Grass, Amboseli 2008. Leading Matriarch Killed by Poachers, 2009

© Nick Brandt

Line of Rangers with Tusks of Killed Elephants, Amboseli 2011

© Nick Brandt

Elephant Skull, Amboseli 2010

© Nick Brandt

Lion Before Storm - Sitting Profile, Masai Mara, 2006

© Nick Brandt

Portrait of Lioness Against Rock, Serengeti 2007

© Nick Brandt

Wildebeest Arc, Masai Mara 2006

© Nick Brandt

Elephant with Exploding Dust, Amboseli 2004

© Nick Brandt

Abandoned Ostrich Egg, Amboseli 2007

© Nick Brandt

Courtesy Nick Brandt / Fotografiska, Stockholm

"On this Earth, A Shadow Falls"

October 7, 2011 - January 8, 2012

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Diane Arbus, the Exhibition at Jeu de Paume

Diane Arbus (New York, 1923-1971) revolutionized the art she practiced. Her bold subject matter and photographic approach produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its steadfast celebration of things as they are.

Arbus found most of her subjects in New York City, a place that she explored as both a known geography and as a foreign land, photographing people she discovered during the 1950s and 1960s. Her contemporary anthropology - portraits of couples, children, carnival performers, nudists, middle-class families, transvestites, zealots, eccentrics, and celebrities - stands as an allegory of the human experience, an exploration of the relationship between appearance and identity, illusion and belief, theater and reality.

In this first major retrospective in France, Jeu de Paume presents a selection of two hundred photographs, including all of the artist's iconic photographs as well as many that have never been publicly exhibited. Even the earliest examples of her work demonstrate Arbus's distinctive sensibility through the expression on a face, someone's posture, the character of the light, and the personal implications of objects in a room or landscape.

"I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them."
~~Diane Arbus

Identical twins, Roselle, New Jersey 1967

Untitled (6) 1970-71

Teenage couple on Hudson Street, N.Y.C 1963
Copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus

Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962
Copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus

Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C. 1967
Copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus

A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C. 1966
Copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus

Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, Long Island 1963
Copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus

Courtesy Jeu de Paume, Paris, France

Diane Arbus

October 18, 2011 - February 5, 2012

@Jeu de Paume, Paris
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Camille Zakharia: Coastal Promenade

Camille Zakharia uses his camera to document the journey taken since his departure from Lebanon in 1985. Born in 1962 in Tripoli, Zakharia fled his country's civil war, and spent time in the US, Turkey, Greece and Canada before moving to Bahrain in 1999. A graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax, Canada), and a Bachelor of Engineering from the American University of Beirut, Zakharia received numerous accolades for his work and exhibited in distinguished venues across North America and the Middle East. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the prestigious Jameel Prize at the Victoria & Albert Museum for Islamic art.

Coastal Promenade was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of Bahrain as part of the Reclaim project, which won Bahrain the Golden Lion Award in their participation at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennal. The series looks at the present state of the archipelago's coastline, devasted over the last few years by urban change.
Adopting the classical documentary tradition, Camille Zakharia has produced an inventory of the shoreline's landscapes and architecture of lost, desolate zones devoid of animal, plant or human life. And yet these places possess a fragile everyday beauty: beneath a cloudless sky, a sprinkling of fishermen's huts stands as relics of a declining culture - an architecture without architects, as the photographer calls it, which is equally threatened by political and social change.

Coastal Promenade

@Camille Zakharia / Musee du Quai Branly, Photoquai 2011

@Camille Zakharia / Musee du Quai Branly, Photoquai 2011

Camille Zakharia " Coastal Promenade " is currently on exhibit at the Musee du Quai Branly

September 13 - November 11, 2011

Courtesy Musee du Quai Branly / Photoquai 2011
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Marian Drew: " Still Life "

This body of work variously titled Still Life, Still Lives, Australiana, Every Living Thing and All that remains explores the genre of the European 'Still Life' painting as translated into the context of Australia and contemporary art practice. This work questions colonial cultural heritage and the philosophical discourses that frame human relationships to animal and to wildlife in particular. The long lens of the "wild life photographer" is replaced by the close up lens, painted light and the table top.

Marian Drew is Associate Professor in Photography at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections including the Getty Museum and the National Gallery of Australia. She has held 25 solo exhibitions in Australia, the United States, France and Germany. Drew represented Australia in the First Asia Pacific Triennial in 1992.

Marian Drew uses road kill animals in her work and states: "With this work I aim to bring an actual and specific death to our attention and to acknowledge this animal's close link to the sustainment of our lives."

" Still Life" hopes to draw attention to the value and beauty of these animals and acknowledge the relationship these animals have to our present lives.

Marian Drew's Still Life series will be on exhibit at the Quai Branly Museum from September 13 to November 11, 2011.

Marsupial with Protea, 2006