Pierre Faure, Büro für Fotos, Cologne

Pierre Faure

Büro für Fotos, Cologne

28 October - 16 December 2000

The large color photographs of PIERRE FAURE are images of urban civilisation in the metropolis of the present. They show people and situations in a city space that has long ago lost, or perhaps never owned, a human measure: industrial zones at urban peripheries and in city centres, traffic junctions, urban no man's lands.

The films and photographic work of Pierre Faure are based "as he himself says in an interview" on constant observation. As an observer, he becomes attentive to situations in which individuals maintain their presence in relation to lifeless surroundings. A group of taxi drivers sits between two rows of cabs, under one of the countless pillars at a Parisian airport. Waiting for hours in this space, they play chess. A man and a woman meet on the Plateau of La Defense before the stereotypical cold facades of a wall of office buildings. A traveller reads, quiet and alone, in the waiting room of a train station, oblivious to the garbage around her. The urban situations that Pierre Faure describes show how parallel worlds with invisible boundaries evolve out of "non-lieux"(non-space) realms and point the way to the choreography of the everyday.

Through this rich and complex net of relationships we find ourselves in unknown spheres where nothing belongs to anyone, but also where signs of the human condition blink off and on. In this respect, Pierre Faure seeks to frame the way our hidden compasses guide us across the public stage. Pierre Faure prevents the viewer from penetrating his work by keeping him at a certain remove from the space represented. He reveals no recognisable social classifications of his subjects; his interest lies in the diversity of appearance and sense of reality each person projects alone or in relationship to others.

Pierre Faure was born in 1965, studied photography in Arles at the Ecole Nationale de la Photographie. He lives in Montreuil near Paris.

BURO FUR FOTOS

Ewaldistraße 5, 50670 Köln

www.burofurfotos.de

Rebecca Lewis, Büro für Fotos, Cologne - South Park

Rebecca Lewis: South Park

Büro für Fotos, Cologne

8 September - 21 October 2000

Highway Nine goes through the state of Colorado. It stretches along the foot of the Rocky Mountains and bisects the valley of South Park - a magical, neglected nowhere in the middle of the western United States. In the fall of 1999, on assignment from the magazine The Face, London-based photographer REBECCA LEWIS spent five days in the place that lent its name to that cult cartoon created by two guys from Denver.

Of the typically American, one-horse towns you find in the region--such as Alma and Fairplay--one of the cartoonists said, "A very specific kind of person lives in South Park. In many ways, you don't get more isolated than these people get. Unless you actually live in the area, there's not a single, solitary reason for you to be there."These oddly assorted remnants of the Gold Rush, towns that own up to their outsider status, where your next-door neighbor might be a bear or a wolf, are still each imbued with much local color.

Rebecca Lewis got to know a few of the inhabitants; personalities to whom the characters in South Park owe many thanks. Her investigation, "What is South Park" begins where a new world began: a car trip away from the big city to a valley in the Rocky Mountains where buildings--some abandoned--wrestle with the wilderness and echoes of wilder times, where cars and vending machines punctuate zones larded with signs and symbols, where the inhabitants have either just arrived or lived here for an eternity. There is reticence and restraint in the faces of these men, but they also possess a capacity for stubbornness and comical high-spirits. Most folks who live in a place like South Park have crazy-quilt histories, sewn of parts that have little to do with each other, yet Lewis's photographs provide us with clues to solve the often-tragic puzzles of their lives.

The exhibition at Büro für Fotos shows fifteen works from Rebecca Lewis's South Park series.

Rebecca Lewis was born in 1970 on the Isles of Scilly and studied from 1995-98 at the London College of Printing, graduating with honors and a BA in photography. Her work on the London Mod scene, some of which was shown in her first exhibition at Büro für Fotos (6 March - 10 April 1999), earned her runner-up prize of the Observer Hodge Award. She lives and works in London.

BURO FUR FOTOS

Ewaldistraße 5, 50670 Köln

www.burofurfotos.de

Miron Zownir, Büro für Fotos, Cologne - Radical Eye

Miron Zownir: Radical Eye

Büro für Fotos, Cologne

4 December 1999 - 29 January 2000

MIRON ZOWNIR (b. 1953) started out photographing punks in Berlin in the 1970s, and then moved to the USA where he began chronicling fringe sexuality, freaks and down-and-outs in New York. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he went to Russia to continue his work there.

The result is a collection of every kind of depravity and degradation, humanity at its lowest ebb: freaks, drug addicts, the insane, and other outsiders-each difficult to behold, and even harder to accept. But Miron Zownir makes no judgements about his subjects or their lives. He lets them express themselves solely through his camera lens; they look at us and their gaze shows us who they are.

The portraits of these people fascinate us because they transcend voyeuristic glimpses of weirdness to represent unflinching portraits of humanity.

BURO FUR FOTOS

Ewaldistraße 5, 50670 Köln

www.burofurfotos.de

Bernd Arnold, Büro für Fotos, Cologne

Bernd Arnold: Wahlkampfrituale

Büro für Fotos, Cologne

18 September - 17 October 1998

Wahlkampfrituale = "rituals of an election campaign"

The black & white reportage photographs by BERND ARNOLD (b. 1961) taken in summer 1998 are not only a documentation on the election campaign for the new chancellor in Germany (Bundestagswahl), but the most current documentation about this event.

The Bundestagswahl had not even been concluded upon the opening date of the exhibition. The photographs had not even been requested by any newspaper and were first time shown at the Büro für Fotos. The photojournalist Bernd Arnold has created a series of images kept free from any type of editing interference. The series is the third part of a trilogy. It is the third part of his research on the behavioural attitudes he has observed in different contexts of society.

In the first part he documented the catholic life scenery in Cologne (compiled in the book "Das Kölner Heil", 1997). The second part is a collection of TV set sceneries, "Ist die Erde eine Mattscheibe?" ("Is the Earth a Telly?").

The entire trilogy shows organisers - show masters - of public events and their audience. Both are conditioned by similar ways of conducts, which are very theatrical, close to what one can imagine as a "ritual". In his very specific and individual photographic style Bernd Arnold lights the precisely calculated gestures of the actors of these public manifestations and succeeds in reflection on the aspects of power and its fascination.

BURO FUR FOTOS

Ewaldistraße 5, 50670 Köln

www.burofurfotos.de

Michael Oréa, Büro für Fotos, Cologne

Michael Oréa: i vesuviani

Büro für Fotos, Cologne

14 March - 18 April 1998

The photographic series of MICHAEL OREA (b. 1963) shows a journey from Germany to Naples and his stay in the Italian metropolis in January 1998.

The artist took photographs from the very first moment of a 14-hour trip by train departing from Munich until his arrival in Naples. He expresses the various impressions he received on his way meeting "i vesuviani", those people living nearby the volcano Vesuvius. He focused on suburbs and their inhabitants as a very careful passer-by inscribing a distance in the photographic material he delivers.

Putting two very small sepia toned prints (archive format) on each page he formed an associative memory. These images force you to look very close as if you were reading a book. The non- conceptual and almost by coincidence selected images create a poetic and sensitive view of a journey.

BURO FUR FOTOS

Ewaldistraße 5, 50670 Köln

www.burofurfotos.de