WANAFOTO: street photography

Showing posts with label street photography. Show all posts

25/07/25

Lee Friedlander, Joseph Rodríguez, Garry Winogrand @ Museum Ludwig, Cologne - "Street Photography" Exhibition Curated by Barbara Engelbach

Street Photography

Lee Friedlander, Joseph Rodríguez, Garry Winogrand

Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Through October 12, 2025

Lee Friedlander

New York City, 1963

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1963, 22 x 32,9 cm

Museum Ludwig, Cologne

and Luhring Augustine, New York

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Garry Winogrand

New York City, 1969

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1978, 22,9 x 34,2 cm

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Joseph Rodriguez

220 West Houston Street, NY 1984,

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988, 25,2 x 37,2 cm

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

The street life of cities has always been a fascinating subject for photographers, who have approached it in a variety of ways, from candid images documenting urban unrest to portraits that shine a spotlight on individuals. Since the nineteenth century, cities and photography have been directly linked through the idea of modernity. With the introduction of compact cameras such as the Leica, street photography developed into its own genre in the mid-twentieth century. Small-format cameras gave photographers greater flexibility and enabled them to respond quickly while remaining discrete. They explored public space without obtruding and, in contrast to staged photography, captured candid and spontaneous moments that had previously been considered unworthy photographic subjects. Influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s concept of the “decisive moment,” these photographers sought to capture the fleeting instant when light, composition, and subject aligned to convey the significance of an event.

Lee Friedlander

New York City, 1965

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1965, 22 x 32,9 cm

Museum Ludwig, Cologne

and Luhring Augustine, New York

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Garry Winogrand

Untitled, from: Women are Beautiful, around 1970

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1981, 21,7 x 32,4 cm

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Joseph Rodriguez

I picked him up at a club and I took him to

Brooklyn. He was a happy camper, NY 1984,

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988, 24,8 x 36,8 cm

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

This exhibition in the Photography Room at the Museum Ludwig is dedicated to three protagonists from two generations of street photography: Garry Winogrand (b. 1928 in New York, d. 1984), Lee Friedlander (b. 1934 in Aberdeen, Washington, based in New York), and Joseph Rodríguez (b. 1951 in Brooklyn, based in New York). Despite all three photographers sharing the same subject matter, each one pursues a singular approach that produces distinct results. Iconic photographs from the 1960s to the 1980s are displayed alongside lesser-known examples from each photographer’s oeuvre. All of the works on display were included in donations made by the Bartenbach Family in 2015 and Volker Heinen in 2018, or have been acquired by the Museum Ludwig since 2001.

Lee Friedlander

New York City, 1966

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1966, 22 x 32,9 cm

and Luhring Augustine, New York

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Lee Friedlander

Mount Rushmore, 1969

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1969, 22 x 32,9 cm

Museum Ludwig, Cologne

and Luhring Augustine, New York

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

The landmark exhibition "New Documents" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967 helped launch the careers of Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander. Their striking photographs broke with visual conventions, such as a level horizon line or a centered main subject. Garry Winogrand frequently tilted his viewfinder, producing skewed horizon lines that offer a new view of reality and make his images appear spontaneous, as does his purposeful use of blurriness, overexposure, underexposure, and backlighting. Lee Friedlander, in turn, created compositions in which the viewer’s gaze is hindered by obstructions, such as shadows, signs, architectural elements, and streetlights, or is disoriented by reflections.

Garry Winogrand

Circle Line Statue of Liberty Ferry, New York, 1971

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1973, 21,7 x 32,4 cm

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Garry Winogrand

Untitled, from: Women are Beautiful, around 1973

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1973, 21,7 x 32,4 cm

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, who are represented in the exhibition with twenty images each, both use photography in a self-reflective way that brings the formal aspects of photography to the fore. This encourages an analytical gaze, producing an emotional distance between the viewer and the subject, which often results in ambivalent images where the intention of the photographer remains unclear. Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander each developed their own distinct style, embracing originality and authorship by merging documentary photography and personal expression. While they attempted to distance themselves from photojournalism and social documentary photography, eschewing eventbased, narrative-focused, and emotionally charged imagery, Joseph Rodriguez’s work deliberately engages with these genres. He aspires to give visibility to marginalized people by communicating with his subjects and attempting to tell their stories. Many of his photographs are accompanied by short commentaries that provide information about the context in which each image was created. Joseph Rodríguez’s pictures employ unusual perspectives and surprising compositions, and his use of reflections emphasizes the subjectivity of the photographer’s empathic gaze beyond the momentariness of the shot. The exhibition features around twenty photographs from his Taxi series.

Joseph Rodriguez

East Village, NY, 1984

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988, 25,3 x 37,4 cm

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

Joseph Rodriguez

Pulaski Skyway, New Jersey, 1984

Gelatin silver paper, print after 1988, 25,2 x 37,2 cm

Repro: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv

This is the first exhibition in the new Photography Rooms at the Museum Ludwig, centrally located on the second floor.

Curator: Barbara Engelbach

MUSEUM LUDWIG

Heinrich-Böll-Platz , 50667 Köln

www.museum-ludwig.de

Street Photography - Lee Friedlander, Joseph Rodríguez, Garry Winogrand

Museum Ludwig, Cologne, May 3 – October 12, 2025

18/12/24

Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits @ Denver Art Museum

Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits

Denver Art Museum

November 17, 2024 – May 11, 2025

DAWOUD BEY

A Young Man Resting on an Exercise Bike,

Amityville, NY, from the series Street Portraits, 1988

Pigment print

Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago

DAWOUD BEY

A Couple in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY,

from the series Street Portraits, 1988

Pigment print

Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) presents Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits, featuring 37 portraits by celebrated photographer and 2017 MacArthur Fellow DAWOUD BEY (American, born 1953).

From 1988 to 1991, Dawoud Bey collaborated with Black Americans of all ages whom he met on the streets of various American cities. He asked a cross section of people in these communities to pose for him, creating a space of self-presentation and performance in their urban environments.

“We’re pleased to present the first standalone museum show of this important work,” said Eric Paddock, Curator of Photography for DAM. “Dawoud Bey’s Street Portraits mark a turning point where the deliberate, closely observed portraits he had been making with a handheld camera began to contain what he has called ‘the kind of lush physical description’ he wanted his pictures to convey—and that is a consistent part of all the work he has made since. The slower process of working with a camera on a tripod invited collaboration between the artist and his subjects, making each picture both an experiment and a discovery.”

Dawood Bey used a large format tripod-mounted camera and a unique positive/negative Polaroid film that created both an instant print and a reusable negative. Bey considers photography an ethical practice that requires collaboration between the artist and his subjects. To reciprocate with the people who posed for him, he gave each person a small black-and-white Polaroid print.

"This is the first standalone museum show of Bey’s Street Portraits," said Eric Paddock, Curator of Photography for the DAM. "Each picture is an experiment, a discovery that describes people and the places where they live. At the same time, these photos are attentive to the quality of light on a particular day and the way the artist orchestrates all those things through his camera. This was a transformational work that evolved through the 20 years of Dawoud’s signature photography."

The exhibition is organized by the community the photographs were made: Brooklyn; Washington, D.C.; Rochester; Amityville; and Harlem. Defying racial stereotypes, the resulting photographs reveal the Black subjects in all of their psychologically rich complexity, presenting themselves openly and intimately to the camera, the viewer, and the world.

DENVER ART MUSEUM

100 W. 14th Avenue Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204

denverartmuseum.org

23/03/12

Street Photography at National Gallery of Art, Washington DC - I Spy: Photography and the Theater of the Street, 1938-2010

I Spy: Photography and the Theater of the Street, 1938-2010

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Curator: Sarah Greenough

April 22 - August 5, 2012

This exhibition is devoted to street photographs by some of the genre's greatest photographers: Walker Evans (1903-1975), Harry Callahan (1912-1999), Robert Frank (b. 1924), Bruce Davidson (b. 1933), Philip-Lorca diCorcia (b. 1951), and Beat Streuli (b. 1957). "The Gallery is pleased to continue its long tradition of exhibitions devoted to the innovative ways in which photographers have captured and explored the urban environment," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "I Spy also showcases the Gallery's strong holdings in this genre, featuring more than 20 works from the collection along with nine promised gifts."

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Head #22, 2001

chromogenic print,121.92 x 152.4 cm (48 x 60 in.)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Charina Endowment Fund

Since the invention of small hand-held cameras and faster films in the late 19th century, photographers have recorded everyday life in the urban environment. Mining the city rich potential, they have explored its varied subject matter —people, architecture, and modes of transportation— to celebrate the cacophony and diversity of modern life, as well as its rapid pace.

The photographers represented in this exhibition have creatively pursued this genre by setting rigid parameters on how they made their works. Like children playing the game "I Spy" by looking through the narrow frame of a car window, these photographers restricted the ways they made their pictures as a means of selecting and ordering the chaos of the city. Walker Evans hid the camera from the unsuspecting public and photographed without even looking through the lens, Robert Frank photographed only what could be seen from the windows of a bus moving through the city, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Beat Streuli placed their cameras in single spots to capture photographs of random passersby. But all these photographs and videos court chance and serendipity, and all these artists view the street as a perpetually fascinating spectacle.

Arranged both chronologically and monographically, I Spy: Photography and the Theater of the Street, 1938-2010 explores these ideas through the presentation of nearly 90 works, including a video and a digital still sequence. Evans, Callahan, and Frank embarked on their projects as a challenge to create images in a fundamentally different manner than they previously had; diCorcia and Streuli incorporate such devices into their regular practice. All the works address questions of voyeurism, surveillance, and privacy.

The exhibition includes photographs made by Walker Evans between 1938 and 1941 on the New York subways with a camera concealed beneath his coat, as well as those he took standing on a street corner in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1941. Harry Callahan is represented with an evocative group of photographs of women lost in thought on the busy Chicago streets in 1950. Robert Frank's elegant, almost balletic suite of photographs made from the windows of a bus moving through New York City in 1958 will also be presented, as will a series of bold, aggressive color photographs by Bruce Davidson taken on the New York subways between 1980 and 1985.

Contemporary artists Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Beat Streuli have pushed this genre still further in works made in the 1990s and into the 21st century. Mining the latent theatricality of the street, diCorcia erected scaffolding and lights in busy urban areas to create a series of monumental portraits of hapless pedestrians who chanced to pass in front of his camera.

The exhibition concludes with two works by the Swiss artist Beat Streuli made on the streets of New York: a digital still sequence, reconfigured expressly for this show from its original display in 2002, and a video made in 2009. Using a telephoto lens to capture richly saturated scenes, Beat Streuli reveals not only the congestion and heterogeneity of modern urban life, but also its beauty. As he transforms the ordinary into the iconic, he shows the isolation and anonymity of the individual in a crowd. In addition, his work calls into question the surveillance photography now so routinely captured by governments and corporations, and it makes us realize ever more keenly how in our daily lives we are both watching the world around us and are being scrutinized by it.

The exhibition curator is Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art.

I Spy: Photography and the Theater of the Street, 1938–2010 was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA. For information visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov.

Supports: The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of The Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation and the Trellis Fund. Tru Vue has provided in kind support of Optium Acrylic Glazing for the works of art.

13/11/11

Breitner: Pioneer of Street Photography, Institut Néerlandais, Paris

Breitner: Pioneer of Street Photography
Institut Néerlandais, Paris Through 22 January 2012

For the first time in France, the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), in collaboration with the Institut Néerlandais (Paris), has mounted a large retrospective exhibition of photographs taken around 1900 by the Dutch artist GEORGE HENDRIK BREITNER (1857-1923). Breitner is known mainly as a painter of cityscapes, nudes and genre studies. In the present exhibition, however, he emerges as one of the most intriguing photographers of his day, who recorded life in Amsterdam and other large cities such as Paris and Berlin in an eminently modern and personal style.

GEORGE HENDRIK BREITNER Het Kolkje and the Oudezijds Achterburgwal in Amsterdam, 1894-1898
Rijksmuseum’s collection. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Precisely a century ago, it became clear that G. H. Breitner was not only a major painter but also an excellent photographer. Since then Holland has staged numerous exhibitions of his photos, but in France he is less well-known as a photographer. His photographic work has been compared to that of such well-known French contemporaries as Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Eduard Vuillard. Like them, he had a penchant for city streets as well as the intimate family circle. Breitner's earliest photos probably date from 1889, a year or two after he settled in Amsterdam.

He was one of the first to explore the possibilities of the new hand-held cameras, which were easy to carry and inconspicuous. He photographed life on the streets of that dynamic city. In the approximately 30 surviving photographs taken during his various stays in Paris, we see a great many horses, which at the time dominated the street scene. In the photos featured in this exhibition, we see how Breitner 'experimented' with various photographic techniques. By photographing against the light, for example, he created powerful silhouettes. And by adopting a very high or very low standpoint, he lent his photos an unusual perspective. Not only was he successful in evoking the vitality of a large city and the liveliness of its passers-by, he also knew how to create an alienating effect by photographing individuals at very close quarters. Breitner was a voracious photographer, unflinching and impulsive. These qualities lend his photos an intensity that is lacking in the work of the professional photographers active in his day, who as a rule produced images that were more static and perfunctory. Breitner broke with all the traditional rules and regulations.

BREITNER: PIONEER OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY consists of a broad selection of photos taken by George Hendrik Breitner, mainly cityscapes and images of street life in Amsterdam. The Rijksmuseum has contributed 33 original enlargements, as well as one painting, one watercolour, two sketchbooks, and a well-worn, paint-spattered camera that belonged to Breitner. The Musée d'Orsay owns two paintings by G. H. Breitner. One of them, the early Clair de lune, is on display at the Institut Néerlandais. The exposition also features several dozen original small-format prints, as well as modern enlargements of Breitner's negatives, all on loan from the Netherlands Institute for Art History in The Hague.

INSTITUT NEERLANDAIS 121, rue de Lille - 75007 Paris, France
www.institutneerlandais.com

Since 3 November 2011 the Netherlands Institute for Art History (The Hague) has published a digital overview of the photographs of George Hendrik Breitner. For the first time, no fewer than 2,300 original photos from the Institute's own collection are now accessible to an international audience.

08/01/09

Graffiti Art Photos from Marseille and Barcelona

Graffiti Street Art Photographs from Marseille in South of France and Barcelona in Spain