Guillermo Srodek-Hart, Dina Mitrani Gallery, Miami

Photography: Guillermo Srodek-Hart:  Short Stories
Dina Mitrani Gallery, Miami FL
Through March 30, 2012

Short Stories by photographer Guillermo Srodek-Hart at Dina Mitrani Gallery in Miami includes images taken during the artist’s travels to remote rural towns outside of Buenos Aires. With his large format, 4x5 film camera, he captures cluttered old shops and bars that have been frozen in time.  His complex compositions deliver rich color images with densely overflowing content, giving the viewer's eye an innumerable amount of detailed information to  observe.Accompanying the photographs in the show are texts that glimpse further into the lives of those people that the artist encounters in these isolated towns.

Guillermo Srodek-Hart
Bar Fradejas, 2007
Archival pigment print, 30 x 38 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Dina Mitrani Gallery, Miami

“My photographs are filled with traces of human presence: objects, furniture, stuff hanging from the walls, accumulations on display. They speak to me of the invisible, that which can't be seen but is there, stories to be imagined, and, ultimately, the acknowledgement of our own transience in this world." – Guillermo Strodek-Hart

GUILLERMO SRODEK-HART (1977) studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, Boston, and received his MFA from Mass College of Art. He was awarded the Klemm Prize in 2005 and the Petrobrás Award 2006, both in Argentina. In 2008, he was among the 30 artists chosen to be part of the book Contemporary Argentine Art, Artista X Artista. His work is included in the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan. Guillermo Srodek-Hart's website: www.srodekhart.com

Dina Mitrani Gallery
Wynwood Art District
Miami, Florida 33127 USA
www.dinamitranigallery.com

On Horizons, Photo Museum Winterthur - Set 8 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur

On Horizons - Set 8 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur
Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland
Curator: Thomas Seelig
Through May 20, 2012 

The photographic gaze into the horizon is a mirror for internal and external states and produces artistic interpretations and commentaries. As in other artistic genres, landscape in photography is interpreted through political and private gazes and the results go far beyond purely aesthetic experiences. Assembled from the collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur, this exhibition shows how photographers since the mid-1960s have approached their imagery from a range of analytical and emotional standpoints.  

 

 Garry Winogrand
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1958
Silbergelatine-Abzug, 21,5 x 32 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Estate of Garry Winogrand / Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1958. This amazing photograph by Garry Winogrand is part of the exhibition organized by the Swiss museum dedicaced to the photography in Winterthur, near Zurich.

Also on view, 1970s B&W and color photographs by renowed photographers Luigi Ghirri, Shomei Tomatsu, Guido Guidi and Robert Häusser.

Luigi Ghirri
Salisburgo (Salzburg), 1977
C-Print, 23,8 x 35,5 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Estate of Luigi Ghirri

This photograph by Luigi Ghirri is from “Diaframma 11, 1/125 luce naturale” Aperture 11, 1/125 second shutter speed with natural day light. The exhibition also features Luigi Ghirri’s pictures from “Kodakrome” (1973).

Shomei Tomatsu
Japan World Exposition, Osaka, 1970
C-Print, 20,5 x 29,7 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
Acquired with funds from Canon (Schweiz) AG
© Shomei Tomatsu

Guido Guidi
Fosso Ghiaia, 1972
Silbergelatine-Abzug, 17,3 x 17,3 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Schenkung Thomas Koerfer
© Guido Guidi

Robert Häusser
Relative Orientierungen, Relative orientations, 1972
Gelatin-silver print, 41 x 57 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Gift of Robert Häusser
© Robert Häusser / FIP / Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum

Exploring unknown locations provides the creative impulse for works by three Swiss photographers Balthasar Burkhard, Reto Camenisch, and Jan Jedlicka, who express their visions in monumental individual images or in series of small-scale works.

Balthasar Burkhard
Chlönthal, 2002
Triptych Gelatin-silver prints, 244 x 306 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Gift of Volkart Foundation
© Estate of Balthasar Burkhard

Lewis Baltz is a participant of the famous exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, which in 1975 first addressed the man-created interface between civilization and nature.

Lewis Baltz
Aus: Continuous Fire Polar Circle, 1986
Gelatin-silver print, 20,2 x 25,4 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Dauerleihgabe Lewis Baltz
© Lewis Baltz

 

Time for looking and contemplation is the central element of Himmel [Heaven], an eighty-one image slide show by weather phenomenologist Andreas Züst. Accordingly, it shares a close bond with the hi-gloss digital video Highlights II by Dominik Hodel as well as the publication LA AIR by Bruce Nauman, which presents sunsets over Los Angeles juxtaposed with minimalist color studies.

Andreas Züst
From: Sky, 1990-2000
Slide show in 81 parts
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Estate of Andreas Züst

 Dominik Hodel
Headlights II, 2010
Full-HD Videoloop 2.45 min.
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Dominik Hodel

When Christian Schwager photographs almost innocent-looking meadows and forests in Bosnia some ten years after the civil war, the unhealed wounds, the hidden signs of violence, disturb us. Pictures of landscapes are never neutral, the exacting gaze of the photographs anchor them in a particular zeitgeist and open up additional levels of meaning.

When Robert Frank seeks visual answers to elementary questions of life in the sparse surroundings of his house in Nova Scotia (Canada), circling about his direct environment again and again, landscape becomes a projection screen for yearnings and remembrances.

 Robert Frank
For Andrea 1954-1974, Mabou, 1975
Gelatin-silver print, 49,6 x 39,8 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Gift of George Reinhart
© Robert Frank

Also on view a triptych by the landscape photographer Axel Hütte. His last book, Towards the Woods, was published in september 2010 by Schirmer/Mosel (in english).

 Axel Hütte
Furka, Schweiz, 1995
2 C-Prints, each 205 x 162 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Axel Hütte

 

With works by the following artists : Caroline Bachmann / Stefan Banz, Lewis Baltz, Balthasar Burkhard, Reto Camenisch, Gintaras Didziapetris, Dick Duyves, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, Thomas Flechtner, Robert Frank, Dunja Evers, Luigi Ghirri, John Gossage, Guido Guidi, Robert Häusser, Dominik Hodel, Roni Horn, Axel Hütte, Jan Jedlicka, Claudio Moser, Bruce Nauman, Igor Savchenko, Christian Schwager, Yoshiko Seino, Shomei Tomatsu, Garry Winogrand, and Andreas Züst.

The exhibition is organized by THOMAS SEELIG, curator of the collection at Fotomuseum Winterthur.

Accompanying the exhibition is, as part of the series of publications on the collection of the Photography Museum Winterthur, a collection brochure with works of the exhibition: On Horizons – Set 8 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur, THOMAS SEELIG (ed.), Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, 2011, 32 pages, numerous color and b/w illustrations, softbound, 24,6 x 20 cm, German / English. With an essay by CHRISTOPH RIBBAT, and texts to the artists. On the cover of the brochure is a detail of the photogaph by Luigi Ghirri taken in Salzburg in 1977.

Alpi – a Film by Armin Linke
Film screening on September 28, 2011 with an introduction by Armin Linke, in conjunction with the exhibition On Horizons. The film Alpi is the result of seven years of research into how the landscapes of the Alps—spanning the borders of eight nations and four languages—are perceived and used. In the film the Alps are portrayed as an island that is subjected to numerous global transformations. The complexity of social, economic, and political relationships within the context of landscape are easily visualized by this centralized and fragile region. The screening has been concluded by a public discussion with Thomas Seelig and Armin Linke. ARMIN LINKE (b. 1966) is an artist who works with photography and film. He lives in Milan and Berlin.

Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland / Suisse
Photography Museum - Musée de la photographie
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
www.fotomuseum.ch

Rita Bernstein and Martine Fougeron at Gallery 339, Philadelphia

Martine Fougeron: After Prom - from the Tête-à-Tête Project
Rita Bernstein: Ghost of Summer    
Gallery 339, Fine Art Photography, Philadelphia
Through January 29, 2011

Gallery 339 in Philadelphia presents two solo exhibitions through January 29, 2011.

After Prom, the latest chapter in MARTINE FOUGERON’s Tête-à- Tête Project.  In 2005, Fougeron began photographing her sons, presenting the subtle, beautiful details of daily life through informal portraits of these young teenagers.  As the project broadened to consider the relationships between the sons and among their circle of friends, Fougeron observed that most photography about teenage boys has portrayed dysfunction rather than the routine angst, exuberance, and rebelliousness that characterize adolescence.  Continuing to focus on day-to-day moments and seeming non-events, Fougeron chose to present what she saw as a more representative portrait of teenage life—filled not with despair, but with the rich and complex drama of growing up.  With After Prom, Martine Fougeron closes the adolescent phase of Tête- à-Tête, examining a key rite of passage—the post-prom party. Fougeron captures the abandon and the ambivalence of this moment when the comfort of what is familiar begins to slip away.

Ghost of Summer is an exhibition of recent images by photographer RITA BERNSTEIN. The scale and intimacy of these remarkable photographs belie the complexity and daring of Bernstein’s work.  Her images walk a delicate tightrope; they evoke a sense of memory and of keenly felt private thoughts, yet their poignancy is controlled and perfectly modulated by their austerity and ambiguity.  They are tender and mysterious, yet never stray into the sentimental. Bernstein further explores this dichotomy of heart versus mind through her print-making process, which demands a high level of skill yet remains uncertain and serendipitous. The process involves liquid silver emulsion applied to delicate Japanese Gampi paper.  With the fragility of the paper, it is impossible to produce a flawless print or make a print that is identical to an earlier one. Rita Bernstein accepts and even embraces this inability to wholly control the process.  It imparts individuality and subtle imperfections that are in accord with the vulnerability and humanity of her images.

GALLERY 339
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

November 12, 2010 - January 29, 2011

http://www.gallery339.com

Mapping Bo-Kaap: History, Memories and Spaces

Mapping Bo-Kaap: History, Memories and Spaces
Iziko Bo-Kaap Museum, Cape Town
On permanent display in the Museum's Community Hall
since October 14, 2010

Mapping Bo-Kaap: History, Memories and Spaces is presented by Iziko Social History Collections department. This exhibition is inspired by a mapping survey project conducted by Vidamemoria Heritage Consultants.

The Mapping Survey Project set out to establish a sense, from the residents themselves, of the nature and location of important sites in the area. Randomly selected participants were asked to identify significant spaces and cultural traditions associated with the area. Participants were also asked to share their views regarding the protection and promotion of heritage resources, as well as why they enjoyed living in the area.

A range of sites, from street corner cafés to spiritual places such as mosques, were categorised as ‘significant’ by members of the community. This exhibition summarises the main findings of the survey and includes a number of historic and contemporary photographs of Bo-Kaap, providing a glimpse into the history and evolution of the area, whose community was also affected by the Group Areas Act.

The contributors to Mapping Bo-Kaap: History, Memories and Spaces hope that the display will serve as a catalyst for an ongoing dialogue, encouraging Bo-Kaap residents to share their stories and memories with Iziko, so that the heritage and cultural life of the area can take its place in civic and national life and may be preserved and shared for many generations to come.

BO-KAAP MUSEUM
71 Wale Street
Cape Town
8000
South Africa

www.iziko.org.za

Photo Show at MoCP Chicago La Frontera: the cultural impact of Mexican migration

La Frontera: the Cultural Impact of Mexican Migration
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago
Curator: Rod Slemmons
Through December 23, 2010

 

DAVID TAYLOR, Pedestrian Fence Construction, NM, 2007,
34×43”, Archival Inkjet Print
Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago

 

Work by: Michael Hyatt - Andy Kropa - Yoshua Okón - Heriberto Quiroz - Juan Pacheco - Antonio Perez - David Rochkind - Marcela Taboada - David Taylor

The idea for this exhibition originated when MoCP Director Rod Slemmons served as a member of the Mexican Community Roundtable of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He realized that there were many layers and generations of migration and immigration present at the table, all with varying agendas and degrees of mutual understanding and tolerance. He felt that these multiple viewpoints were quite different from the simple, commonly held notions of immigration promulgated by the news media in the U.S. 

With experience working within arts communities in Mexico for 25 years, and familiarity with photographers dealing with these issues in both the U.S. and Mexico, Slemmons created this exhibition to explore the following layers of impact of immigration over time and in detail. 

The exhibition addresses the dynamics of the border itself as the choke point, including Minute Men, Border Patrol, and humanitarian groups. This section will primarily be drawn from the work of David Taylor from Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Michael Hyatt from Tucson, Arizona. David Taylor has just published a book titled Working the Line that records his extensive experience with the Border Patrol.

La Frontera also explores the routes to the border in Mexico collectively called El Camino Real, an ironic reference to the 17th century route from Mexico City to California. Some of these routes are illegal and exploitive of the people desperately seeking work in the north. This situation is exacerbated by the increasing volume of drug trafficking that is permanently changing the cultural parameters of Mexico forever. David Rochkind contributes a strong image essay from his project Heavy Hand, Sunken Spirit.

Transformed communities on either side of the border are a focus as well. An example is the town of West Liberty, Iowa, which has been photographed extensively by Andy Kropa. The town has been home to Mexican farm workers since the 1940s, of whom almost all hail from the town of Allende in the Mexican state of Durango. Unlike previous waves of immigrants from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who had no desire to return, there is constant contact between the two towns.  A less-positive example of the effects of migration, especially of men looking for work, is the town of San Miguel Amatilan in the state of Oaxaca. Here women have been forced to take over traditional male occupations such as building houses of adobe, mainly because the majority of the men have moved to the U.S. in search of work and have not come back. Marcela Taboada contributes a project based on this town called Women of Clay.

La Frontera includes photographs from Chicago exploring the lives of families in different waves of immigration who are now living in Pilsen, produced by Antonio Perez and Heriberto Quiroz. The exhibition also addresses Mexican artists in the U.S. who attempt to escape the expectation that they deal only with "Mexican themes," while they still experience being foreigners in a foreign land. Juan Pacheco contributes a project called De Colores, and Yoshua Okón contributes an installation about an imaginary factory on the border that "cans" laughter. 

ROD SLEMMONS is the Director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. From 1982 to 1996 he was the Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Seattle Art Museum, and from 1996 to 2002 he taught Photography, the History of Photography, and Graduate Museum Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was the National Chair of the Society for Photographic Education from 1990 to 1994. He has served as a peer review panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and as a grant reader and site evaluator for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has organized numerous exhibitions including: Diane Arbus (1986); Like a One-Eyed Cat, a 30-year retrospective of the photography of Lee Friedlander (1989); Shadowy Evidence: The Art of E. S. Curtis and His Contemporaries (1989); Persistence of Vision, a retrospective of the digital work of Paul Berger (2003); and Witness: Contemporary Mexican Journalism (2004). His essays and reviews have appeared in dozens of publications including Afterimage, Black Flash, image, and Reflex. 

La Frontera: the Cultural Impact of Mexican Migration
October 8 - December 23, 2010

MoCP – Museum of Contemporary Photography
Columbia College Chicago
Chicago IL 60605 - USA

www.mocp.org

Nobuyoshi Araki, Love and Death at Museo d’Arte Lugano

Araki, Love and Death 
Museo d’Arte Lugano
October 23 - February 20, 2010

© NOBUYOSHI ARAKI, A’s Lovers, s.d.
Courtesy the artist and Yoshiko Isshiki Office, Tokyo

 

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI ranks today as one of the most well-known and celebrated artist photographers in the world with more than four hundred publications to his name. Despite his great celebrity, Araki Love and Death is one of only a very few retrospectives dedicated to him in Europe. 

Nobuyoshi Araki's photography expresses and updates many of the themes most closely connected to Japanese culture. The Lugano exhibition bears witness to the artist's work in its many varied expressions: in addition to the autobiographical series – including Sentimental Journey/Winter Journey, which documents the relationship between the artist and his wife Yoko from the day of their marriage till the tragic illness and premature death of Yoko in 1990– urban landscapes, the suggestive images of flowers and food, the poetic series dedicated to the sky and, of course, the series of female nudes and bondage which are, more than any other of his subjects, so clearly linked to his renown. 

From this short list of subjects it is clear just how much Araki's work expresses Japanese culture, in the exaltation of the changing of the seasons, the ephemeral beauty of flowers, and of feminine sensuality. The artist's work is not limited to a simple registration of these subjects, but they make evident and almost tangible, even to a Western audience, the perturbing character that they have in Japanese culture. 

The exhibition mirrors Araki's urgency to capture the continuous transformation of reality, through a continuous photographic documentation. The display features nearly two thousand medium and large format pictures alongside an impressive installation of three thousand Polaroids taken by the artist over the years are presented in a highly dense, mosaic format. The audience is both overwhelmed and disoriented by the visual impact created not only by the single shots, but by the greater whole of the images. 

Finally, and perhaps what makes the Lugano exhibition unique, is the showing of his latest works, including the series dedicated to his beloved cat Chiro and a series of large format photographs over which the artist intervenes with calligraphy, paint and collage which is presented here to the public for the first time.

Museo d'Arte Lugano
Villa Malpensa
Riva Caccia 5
CH-6900 Lugano

www.mdam.ch

Stanley Kubrick Photographer 1945-1950 Exhibition in Italy

Stanley Kubrick Photographer
Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere e Arti, Venice
Through 14 november 2010

STANLEY KUBRICK, Self-portrait
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

After the great success at Palazzo della Ragione di Milano, with more than 38.000 people visiting the show, the Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere e Arti - Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti in Venice is hosting the exhibition of two hundreds pictures (many of them printed from the original negatives) taken by STANLEY KUBRICK from 1945 up to 1950, when at the age of 17 he was hired by the American magazine Look.

The event's inauguration was timed to coincide with the 67th Venice International Film Festival, where Kubrick received the special Career Golden Lion Award in 1997.

The exhibition is curated by Rainer Crone and set up by Giunti Arte Mostre Musei, jointly with the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., and the Museum of the City of New York – where more than 20,000 still unknown negatives belonging to a young but already great photographer Stanley Kubrick are stored.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK, A tale of a shoe-shine boy, 1947, 16x16'
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

The pictures shown testify the ability of the artist to witness everyday life in America during the post-war period thanks to the ironical and withering shot of New York that was becoming the new world capital and of Dixieland musicians and circus’ epic.

The exhibition bring to the attention a less popular feature of the American filmmaker, conveying his way of taking pictures. Alongside with chess, photography is revealed as one of Kubrick’s main passions, activity inherited from his father and that he started as a teenager and terminated after only five years.
The first picture was published on June 26th, 1945 and portraits a newsvendor reacting to the death of Franklin D Roosevelt. A few months later, Look hired Kubrick as a photo reporter: at 17, he was the youngest photographer on the magazine's staff.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK, Personalities of the circus, march 1948
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

The Look Method, which took the form of a narrative by episodes, did not meet with the approval of leading contemporary photojournalists. The Magazine’s owners wanted a constant follow-up of the characters portrayed in every action. This intruding style was fascinating for Kubrick who loved to build up a story starting from those images. In order to obtain a natural posture, Kubrick would remain unseen hiding his camera’s wire below his jacket and pushing the shutter using a device hidden in his hand.

In the indoor shootings, he would try to use natural light as much as possible working on the exposure time and on the diaphragm opening time. Most part of his aesthetic ability shown in his films was already present in his work of those days.
Kubrick is able to give the spectator the ability to personally interpret the psychological features of those appearing in the pictures.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK, Portugal, 1948
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

“In this way, the first pictures taken by Stanley Kubrick see the light right after WW2 and they not only represent an era but they astonish for their surprising deepness. In this way, they cannot be simply considered as visual archives of the joie de vivre of a young and full of humour artist but they represent a conscious attempt to experiment the resources given by the technical mean with its ability to represent and perceive reality. This aspect will be maintained along the years in all Kubrick’s works.” -- Rainer Crone

An important step as the ambiguity of images and movies are the core of post-war cinema thus called modern and of which Kubrick is one unquestioned maestro.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK,  Untitled, 1950
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

The exhibition, divided in eight sections, will display some of the stories captured by the artist like Portugal, a post-war trip made by two Americans, or Crimes, which witnesses the arrest of two criminals, following the policemen activity, their strategy and their tricks in order to make the arrest.

Betsy Furstenberg, the main character of the section, is presented as the symbol of the elated New Yorker Lifestyle during those years and the counter part of the small shoe shine” standing on the street corners.

Furthermore, there are sections reproducing the life within the Columbia University, an elite place where the American ruling class was educated and at Campus Mooseheart, Illinois, a University dorm built up by donors aimed at forming war orphans bound to America’s future middle class. New Orleans Dixieland musicians’ epic and circus performers will close the show.

Produced and conceived by Giunti Arte mostre musei, the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Giunti Arte wich is the most complete monograph on the topic never issued before in Italy.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK Photographer
28 August - 14 November 2010

Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti
Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti
Campo Santo Stefano
Venice - Italy

Czech Photography – MoCP Chicago - Anne and Jacques Baruch Collection Exhibition

The Anne and Jacques Baruch Collection of Czech Photography: Recent Acquisitions
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago
January 29 - March 28, 2010

 JAROSLAV ROSSLER, Untitled, 1927

Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago

Gift of The Baruch Foundation

In conjunction with the Contemporary Czech Photography exhibition (previous post), the Museum of Contemporary Photography highlight works from the Baruch Collection which were gifted to the museum in 2009.  The exhibition includes works by Vaclav Chochola, František Drtikol, Josef Ehm, Jaromir Funke, Emila Medkova, Jaroslav Rössler, Jan Saudek, Adolf Schneeberger, and Josef Sudek.

The Czech Republic has an incredibly rich photographic tradition. At the turn of the 20th century, professional photographers such as František Drtikol and Josef Sudek joined their European counterparts in exploring experimental techniques to achieve artistic goals, in a movement that came to be known as Pictorialism. In the 1920s and 30s, a group of artists including Jaroslav Rössler and Jaromir Funke began creating highly experimental works influenced by French Surrealism and Russian Constructivism. Often combining elements of montage and abstraction, these avant garde masters became influential worldwide. After World War II, as artists were forced to grapple with pressures from the government, experimentation continued and imaginative and surreal photography grew strong underground and were used to subtly counter political ideology.  Simultaneously, the social documentary tradition thrived, exemplified in the work of Viktor Kolář and Jindrich Streit, who documented the often trying social circumstances. The Baruchs promoted, sold, and collected it all. 

Anne and Jacques Baruch began collecting work by Czech artists in 1968 during a visit to Prague and ended up becoming a window and a voice for the artists following Soviet occupation beginning the same year. Since many of the artists the Baruchs wanted to work with were not sanctioned by the authorities, Anne began smuggling art out of the country, often at great risk to everyone involved. Although government agents would seal her packages of officially sanctioned art before her departure, she would often alter or remake the seals with the help of artists in order to add more to her packages. She always traveled to Prague with a bright red Hartman suitcase equipped with a false bottom. On the way there she would fill it with art supplies that the artists could not buy, and on the return it would have artworks hidden inside. Once she was questioned by the FBI at her gallery, and once she was detained at the Prague airport and questioned at length. She even came up with a code that she used to correspond with artists and take notes about pricing and exhibition details. Through her travels Anne amassed a remarkable collection of both historical and contemporary Czech photography.

MoCP – Museum of Contemporary Photography

Columbia College Chicago, Chicago IL 60605

www.mocp.org