Tag Archives: retrospective

Irving Penn retrospective exhibition: Portraits

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Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits Voque

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits, Marlene Dietrich

 

The National Portrait Gallery in London has dedicated a retrospective exhibition to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated photographers, Irving Penn (1917-2009).

The exhibition is brought together from major international collections and includes over 120 silver and platinum prints, many vintage, ranging from his portraits for Vogue magazine in the 1940s to some of his last work. The exhibition is a survey of Penn’s portraits of major cultural figures from the worlds of literature, Fashion, music and the visual and performing arts brought together from many international collections. Portraits include Truman Capote, Salvador Dalì, Marlene Dietrich, Christian Dior, T.S. Eliot, Duke Ellington, Alfred Hitchcock, Nicole Kidman, Willem de Kooning, Kate Moss, Jessye Norman, Rudolph Nureyev, Edith Piaf, Pablo Picasso, Harold Pinter, Igor Stravinsky, and Tennessee Williams.

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits, Jasper Johns

 

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits

Penn’s photographs stand out for their elegance, the clean look of their images, a strong contrast between subject and background and a “less is more” aesthetic. These are the distinctive features of an oeuvre that marked and captured an epoch. The power of Irving Penn’s visual language is often found in the details and shades of his portraits. Through his sublime techniques of composition, light and printing, the character of his subjects is stripped naked before the camera lens.

Irving Penn said in 1975:
“Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world… very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.”

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits, Kate Moss

 

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits

 

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits

 

Warmenhoven & Venderbos designers fashion Blog: Irving Penn Portraits, Red lips, Mouth

 

The exhibition in the The National Portrait Gallery in London will run until the 6Th of June 2010 and will travel afterwards to Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni where it will be on display from the 1st of July to 19Th of September 2010.

Photos: Irving Penn | Photo top and 6Th photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters | Photo bottom: Cate Gillon/Getty Images | The National Portrait Gallery

Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective

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The NRW Forum in Düsseldorf has organised a major retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs. Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) dominated photography in the late twentieth century and paved the way for the recognition of photography as an art form in its own right. Both during his life and since his death, Mapplethorpe’s work has been the subject of much controversial debate.His radical portrayals of nudity and sexual acts were always controversial; some of his photos caused a stir and frequently resulted in protests outside exhibitions. Above all, Robert Mapplethorpe developed his own photographic style that paid homage to the ideals of perfection and form.

 ‘I look for the perfection of form. I do this in portraits, in photographs of penises, in photographs of flowers.’

 The fact that the photographs are displayed on snow-white walls underpins this view of his work and consciously moves away from the coy Boudoir-style presentation of his photographs on lilac and purple walls a dominant feature of exhibitions of Mapplethorpe’s work for many years and opens up the work to a more concept-based, minimalist view of things.

The exhibition in the NRW Forum covers all areas of Mapplethorpe’s work, from portraits and self-portraits, homosexuality, nudes, flowers and the quintessence of his oeuvre the photographic images of sculptures, including early Polaroids. It will run until 15 August 2010.

 

Trailer of the film Robert Mapplethorpe “Shapes”  by Ralph Goertz | IKS-Medienarchiv

 

 

Top photo: Robert Mapplethorpe at his Whitney Retrospective 1988 by Jonathan Becker, Vanity Fair

Photos by Robert Mapplethorpe | Top Photo by Jonathan Becker, Vanity Fair | Video by Ralph Goertz

Martin Parr: Fashion and Luxury

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In the Luxury Series  and the Fashion Series Martin Parr shifts his focus compared to his other work. Instead of slices of everyday life, Parr has now a keen eye for the luxury of the jet set: people who are comfortable showing off their wealth on various locations: a race meeting in Dubai, the Melbourne cup in Australia, a car show in Beijing and various prestigious international art fairs such as the 2008 Frieze Art Fair in London.

By shifting from the poor and middle class people to the rich, Parr proves to be a tremendous polarizer. He is one of the few photographers who are able to develop an oeuvre depicting a colourful panoramic view of society: from the unappealing mass consumers, the curious rituals of the middle class to the eccentric customs of the super-rich. Striking in Parr’s work is its underlying humor. Parr’s photographs show contemporary social transactions with a certain ironic and critical eye for social events. This can be illustrated well in older pictures such as a seaside cafe where a crowd of women screams for hot dogs or camera-laden tourists invading tourists sites. With his incredibly perceptive eye, he has developed his passion for recording everyday events. Bittersweet irony and an eye for social nuances is a trait he shares with other British artists.

Currently a retrospective exhibition of Martin Parrs photo books is on show at the Rocket Gallery in London. It will run until 30 January 2010.

Photos: Martin Parr | Fashion and Luxury

Exhibition: Showstudio, Fashion revolution

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Showstudio has staged a major exhibition at the London Somerset House called: Showstudio: Fashion revolution. This exhibition is a retrospective of nine years of online innovation, invention and creation and it challenges conventional perceptions of fashion imagery.

Photos from the performance: Banquet | Heston Blumenthal | Ed Griffiths

The exhibition is divided into various segments called: process, performance, participation and fashion film. It opens the process of image-making up to the public – by putting a live, working photographic studio within the exhibition space, to be used by top photographers including Nick Knight of Showstudio himself. Knight will also shoot 100 portraits of London’s ‘beau monde’; models, actors, musicians and artists – and will show a programme of new Fashion Films, specially commissioned by Showstudio for Fashion Revolution.

The exhibition will run untill the 20th of December 2009

Photos: Showstudio | Somerset House