Exhibition | Zeitgeist & Glamour | NRW Forum

Posted on 29/04/2011 by W&V

Legendary images of the 60s and 70s are brought together in the ‘Zeitgeist & Glamour’ exhibition at the NRW-Forum in Düsseldorf; the most spectacular photographs of an exciting era: the icons of an age, superstars and celebrities, and unmistakable milieux. There are both masterful photographs of the highest aesthetic order, ground-breaking in their finesse, and cheerful snapshots of a hidden world. Images of a culture celebrating itself in the midst of fame and glamour, wallowing in the pleasure of a beautiful moment. The pictures embody the spirit of the hour, the attitude of an entire generation. Public and private alike are captured, as are faces and atmospheres, the extravagant and the usual, glamour and its complement: melancholy and forlornness. The Zeitgeist & Glamour exhibition offers a kaleidoscope of life forms from the 60s and 70s that centres on the ‘stages’ of the major cities of the Western world.

The exhbition Zeitgeist & Glamour at the NRW forum in Düsseldorf will run until may 15, 2011.

See also an earlier posted article on the Warmenhoven & Venderbos Blog about David Bailey.

Photos: NRW Forum | Video: Ralph Goertz and Institut für Kunstdokumentation |

David Bailey | The 60s have never ended

Posted on 25/04/2011 by W&V

David Bailey is an inspiring, unique and remarkable photographer who shot fascinating fashion and celebrity photos. In 1959 he became a photographic assistant at the John French studio, and in May 1960, he was a photographer for John Cole’s Studio Five before being contracted as a fashion photographer for British Vogue magazine later that year. Along with Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy, he captured and helped create the ‘Swinging London’ of the 1960s: a culture of high fashion and celebrity chic. The three photographers socialised with actors, musicians and royalty, and found themselves elevated to celebrity status. Together, they were the first real celebrity photographers, named by Norman Parkinson as “the Black Trinity”.

Last year a retrospective of his most iconic photographs with the title “Pure sixties. Pure bailey” was on show at Bonhams. Fifty years on from a decade that changed our cultural history, his images celebrate a period of spontaneity and decadence, capturing the glamour and hedonism of the era. Among the famous faces immortalised by Bailey’s lens are Mick Jagger, Michael Caine and the Jean Shrimpton. In the below video interview he had an interesting talk with Sarfraz Manzoor about Picasso, body language and his dread of photographing modern celebrities.

Some of David Bailey’s photo’s are currently on exhibition at the NRW Forum Düsseldorf. This exhibition carries the title Zeitgeist & Glamour and will run until May 15, 2011. Read more about it in this article on the W&V Blog.

Photos by: David Bailey | Video by: The Guardian | David Bailey website

Fourteen actors acting | A video gallery of classic screen types

Posted on 13/12/2010 by W&V

The New York Times published a video gallery in which 14 famous actors who defined cinema in 2010 capture classic screen types. The performers including Natalie Portman, Matt Damon, Robert Duvall, Noomi Rapace, Jennifer Lawrence and Anthony Mackie act out a number of fascinating, almost surreal and very interesting scenes. The videos where directed by Solve Sundsbo, set to a score by Canadian composer Owen Pallett of “Final Fantasy” and “The Arcade Fire”.

Solve Sundsbo’s clients as a fashion photographer have included Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Dolce & Gabbana. The videos accompany the black-and-white portrait series which Solve Sundsbo shot for “The Scene Makers: Actors Who Defined Cinema in 2010,” in the Hollywood Issue of The New York Times Magazine. These short clips portray not only the art, but also the joy and power of performance.

Please visit the New York Times magazine gallery to find all movies.

Photos and video Solve Sundsbo | Music by Owen Pallett | New York Times magazine

The many faces of Nienke Klunder

Posted on 21/08/2010 by W&V

Nienke Klunder is a Netherlands based artist who works mainly in sequences and series, she often uses self-portraiture to explore themes of identity and transformation. One striking example of her work is her ” The Community” project. In this portrait series she explores the female quest for identity and self expression. The work does strongly remind us of the conceptual portraits by Cindy Sherman. Nienke klunder uses, just like Cindy Sherman, herself as model. In her photographic series she shows that every aspect of our daily choices in hair, make up, clothing and styling does add a layer of recognition from society of the character we are, would like or believe ourselves to be.

Photos by Nienke Klunder | Nienke Klunder website

Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin | Exhibition

Posted on 28/06/2010 by W&V

Currently the Foam Fotografiemuseum ( Photography museum) is presenting an exhibition of the stunning work by the photographic duo of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. The exhibition is titled: Pretty Much Everything. It shows approximately 300 photographs spanning 25 years of the duo’s career. Art, fashion and portrait works all exist next to each other. By disregarding any chronological order the combinations of images are based on personal, formal, social, political and intuitive associations that show the way the artists have lived with the images for 25 years.

Inez van Lamsweerde en Vinoodh Matadin launched their international career with the publication of ten pages in the British magazine The Face in 1994. It was here that for the first time in a fashion series the models and the backgrounds were photographed separately and subsequently combined into a single image by use of a computer. The series typified van Lamsweerde and Matadin’s hyper-realistic style and was made to celebrate and subvert fashion within the context of a magazine.

Dubiousness is at the base of practically every image they make. Their work is ambiguous in every sense of the word and balances deliberately on the thin rope between fashion and art, perverting both worlds, mirroring the strangeness of everyday life through an extreme enlargement of a singular part.

Since each photograph demands its own dimensions, and some have been shown over the years and have their own existing size and frame style, the exhibition will have a dynamic flow and will read like a huge stream of images – forming one flowing, pulsating sentence rather than divisions that are grouped by size or subject. This showing will draw the viewer into Inez and Vinoodh’s world of constant dualism, duality and ambiguity, as well as their obsession with giving meaning to the surface, while oscillating between horror and beauty, the grotesque and the quiet, and the spiritual and the banal.