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Friday, 16.07.2010
6 pm . Lecture 1
Beat Streuli
in converstation with Brigitte Werneburg, Art editor, taz, Berlin
London, Tokyo, New York, Sydney — the vibrant streets and squares of cities worldwide form the backdrop for the portraits by Swiss photographer Beat Streuli. For over ten years, Streuli has been documenting such themes as the individual in the urban environment, local youth, and human diversity. His large-format series derive their energy from the tension between the uniformity of the global village and the inimitable uniqueness of every city and its inhabitants. His approach contains a trace of voyeurism, since he shoots his photos from a distance, without his subjects even noticing. His aim is not to capture a decisive moment, but to catch everyday scenes that reveal the private and the individual in anonymous public space.
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Saturday, 17.07.2010
5 pm . Lecture 2 (engl.)
Saul Leiter
Saul Leiter is a flâneur, a pioneer of color photography, and a master in capturing the particular moods and atmospheres of urban life in all their ephemeral nuances. The unique sense of color in his works is evidence of a painterly sensibility, and his photographs taken of the streets of New York since the 1950s almost resemble paintings. His use of a blurred visual effect established a distinct and fundamentally new aesthetic. Saul Leiter shaped the development of street photography, as part of a broader movement that included abstract expressionism, film noir, Beat poetry, and new journalism. All but forgotten until a few years ago, Leiter’s photography is currently being rediscovered.
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Sunday, 18.07.2010
12 pm . Lecture 3 (engl.)
Edward Burtynsky
in conversation Christian-Matthias Pohlert, Photo Director, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Presentation Dr. Melinda Crane, Journalist and Presenter, Berlin
Polluted rivers, wrecked cars, abandoned factories, toxic substances and huge mining craters—Edward Burtynsky’s work deals with the industrial transformation of nature and uses classic landscape photography to document the industrial, manufactured landscape. In his photographs, people appear as appendages of the machines they operate; their functions have turned them into objects. The effects he achieves in his large-format series through carefully composed relationships between colors and graphic elements resemble the work of the 19th century landscape painters. His approach is geometric; his clear visual language is reminiscent of the Becher School. The visual abstraction, together with the perfect visual composition and soft gradations of color, lends his photographs both a strong aesthetic appeal and a contradictory character. And this makes Edward Burtynsky’s photographs all the more arresting. They are powerful visual metaphors for the dichotomy of modern throwaway society.
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Sunday, 18.07.2010
3 pm . Lecture 4 (engl.)
Anders Petersen
in conversation with Christoph Amend, Journalist, Die Zeit, Berlin
Prostitutes, pimps, alcoholics, and the usual small-time criminals—throughout the late 1960s, Swedish photographer Anders Petersen photographed the late-night regulars in Café Lehmitz, a bar on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. His photography book of the same name, published in 1978, has become a classic work of social documentary photography and a milestone in photographic history. The portraits are touching in their candidness and authenticity, and show no trace of voyeurism or false sympathy. Anders Petersen maintains the dignity of his subjects: his gaze does not expose, but expresses solidarity, affection, even a fighting spirit. Since then, Petersen has continued to develop his own inimitable style as he observes people on the margins of society in raw, unembellished social documentary photography, revealing the hidden aspects of human existence. |
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