Sander, Dijkstra, Lipper: photographic exhibitions to attend this weekend
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| Susan Lipper, from the Grapevine 1988–1992 series |
Three different photographers coming from different ages and environments but with an own tradition in iconic social portraiture practice.
August Sander, a photographer more concentrated in depictions of the society of his times and well known for the archetypical imagery taken from a mix of different classes activities during the first years of XX century in Germany is our first selection. Second one is the photo work by the well instructed at Yale University Susan Lipper, whose work on the 1990’s project Grapevine is now revisited as documentary of theatrical representations of a small town at United States, the representative characters of an isolated small structured society. The third one is a point in time taken by the Stedelijk Museum in Netherland to exhibit their collection of the 2017 Hasselblad awarded Rineke Dijkstra, honored for her visuals constructions of young people posing away from inner feelings and in depth confrontation with the spectator who put an eye over their scenarios treated as minimal landscapes.
August Sander
Hauser & Wirth New York
20 April – 17 June 2017
This exhibition moves around the classical work legacy by August Sander, the well-known portfolio of archetypes, and is composed by 40 images that capture the pick of the mountain in the aesthetical road trip of the artist life. Selected from a 231 sequenced group of photographs done by Sander’s son, this group of photographs was part of an effort to re-open his father’s conceptual images to the public in 1971 with the publication of the book “Men without Masks: Faces of Germany 1910-1938”. So, this represents a new opportunity to revisit some of the most influencer portraits of the last century, Sander’s images that reflect the ethnic and class diversity of one of the most controversial society in that times.
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| August Sander - Lackarbeiter (Varnisher), 1930/1972 |
Grapevine: 1988–1992
Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow Poland
28 April 2017 – 18 June 2017
The exhibition is a new point in time of the Grapevine series taken by Susan Lipper in a small town of West Virginia, USA. Living inside the community Lipper reaches the support of the inhabitants to create fictional theatrical compositions that reveal a schematic social order in a society away from contemporary distractions and common egos linked to consumerism anxieties. This way the photo series is a collaborative essay of the life imagery of a not necessarily true documental work. Grapevine is inserted this way into the tradition of building archive photographs of the deep rural America, where the rules of local leaderships re-sounds louder than others. Most of the photographs recall a town involved in the mystery atmosphere of police novels where the calamity keeps waiting in perpetual suspense. The exhibition is part of the activities of the Krakow Photomonth 2017 Festival.
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| Rineke Dijkstra_ Amy, The Krazy House, Liverpool, 2008 |
Rineke Dijkstra: an Ode
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
20 May 2017 – 6 Aug 2017
The exhibition is based on 21 photographs and four videos, the video selection comes from the early realizations by Dijkstra, the images are mostly from the collection of the museum, and they are part of the trace that the Stedelijk Museum has done, since the 1990’s, of the artistic career of the photographer. Also three works never exhibited are going to take its own place during the event. The portrayed people by Dijkstra usually reflects different moments in the long voyage of life, the imagery is built from a mastery aesthetical use of color and the avoidance of flamboyant details that could compete with the compositional discourse, discourse that is carry by the people who is confronting deeply moments in their life: the series with bullfighters and their constantly death avoidance with the other hand giving birth series; the night club photo series with adolescents enjoying life and the induction of others into the military discipline series are examples of the continuous pursuit to exemplify contrast in the human social experience. Rineke Dijkstra’s imagery could be considered as social explorations that categorize moments and people who are voyaging through them.