Current Exhibition

MARIANO VIVANCO - SANTERIA

online exclusive

Bernheimer Fine Art is proud to present the series „Santeria“  by Mariano Vivanco in an exclusive online exhibition. 

Vivanco was born 1975 in Peru and grew up in New Zealand, where his passion for photography began. 

He was influenced by the classical masters and started his career in fashion photography in New York. In the year 2000 he moved to London and has since become one of the leading editorial photographers.

Santeria is a fusion of Catholic practices and African folk beliefs. It emerged in Cuba during the 17th century, and has been embedded in Cuban society ever since. The followers believe that one God created the universe and that the world is cared for by lesser divine beings known as orishas, who represent various forces of nature along with certain human characteristics—for example, Obatalá, the goddess of creation and peace, who dresses in white and associated with the Virgen de la Merced. 

Santeria also uses the colour to recognize initiates as they work to ascend ranks. From the past pain of enslavement and foreign lands come prayer, and a transatlantic retention turned into somethig reverentially unique. When it comes to fashion the color white has held sizable symbolism signifying purity, newness, and the spiritual. 

Such was the inspiration for Mariano Vivanco and Cuban American stylist, Jimi Urquiaga, for a story first published at Models.com in March 2017.

Bridging holy and secular, past and present for a series of images that celebrate the differences as much as the similarities of us all. 

With moving imagery, the duo invokes the spirit of Afro-cuban rite within models. Dressed in immaculate hues of pearl, ivory, and alabaster they prance and pose conjuring up Ori metaphysical. 

From this series only two images have been exhibited prevously. The remaining 13 images are available for the first time in our current exhibition. 

In the recent years Mariano Vivanco has also been able to enter the fine art marked and has been part of Museum shows in Madrid, Copenhagen, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Düsseldorf a.o. 

For the next year a mayor retrospective of his work is planned in his birthtown Lima. 

MAT HENNEK - SILENT CITIES

online exclusive

Bernheimer Fine Art is pleased to announce the inaugural online exhibition of Silent Cities, the newest series by Mat Hennek.

This exhibition accompanies the book published by Steidl in spring 2020. In this work Hennek presents portraits of some of the world’s great cities—from New York, Los Angeles and London, to Tokyo, Munich and Abu Dhabi—yet all of these places are curiously  lacking people. Mat Henneks urban photography offers a powerful commentary on contemporary life, in an psychological, ecological and architectural sense.

Conceived and constructed by man as vessels for human activity, these metropolises are transformed by Hennek into monuments of silence: empty, sometimes eerie sites for rituals of work and recreation that are yet to take place. Whether the shimmering windows of a Dallas office building, a lush Hong Kong garden of palms, blooms and fountains, the famed pastel terraced facades of Monaco, or rows of trolleys outside the concrete bulk of Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, Hennek’s pictures demonstrate a consistent formal rigor and recast familiar environments as new sources for focus and reflection.

Mat Hennek was born in the Black Forest area of Germany in 1969 and today lives with his wife, the French pianist Hélène Grimaud, in upstate New York and California. While previously based in Berlin, Hennek created influential photographic portraits for the entertainment and music industries, before turning his attention to natural landscapes. He has held solo exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia and the USA. Steidl published Hennek’s Woodlands project in 2017, which he presented with Grimaud as the multimedia concert Woodlands and Beyond… at international concert halls such as Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and KKL Lucerne, combining his photos with her performance of romantic and impressionistic compositions. Bernheimer Fine Art has held a number of his exhibition in Munich and Lucerne since 2009.

As author Laureline Amanieux writes, “man is not needed in these works, as it is the viewer who becomes wholly integrated in the bosom of nature.” In Silent Cities he uses the same graphic style that sublimates the landscape into pure abstraction. In his work Hennek eliminates the border between painting and photography.

SILKE LAUFFS - MOROCCO

online exclusive

In recent years Silke Lauffs has been traveling to Morocco frequently and has fallen in love with the timeless views of a place where in many ways the times seam to be standing still. Morocco - located between Atlas and Atlantic - is a diverse, fascinating, mysterious land. The narrow streets in the Medinas, the characteristic patios and beautiful architecture and design in the Mosques, Madras and schools, the Royal Palaces and gardens hold an element of surprise and deep fascination for many photographers over the times. 

In her distinct photographic style Silke has captures this part of the Moroccan culture in a ravishing, timeless beauty. The pale morning light fascinates her always and is intrinsic to the distinctive mysteriousness of her imagery. Long exposure times create a slight mistiness in her black and white negatives that she later enlarges and adds sepia tones. Her photographic process results in breathtaking prints of tremendous depth.

From her travels to India (2002) and Myanmar (2008), Silke Lauffs has created a poetical body of work exploring these exotic places, landscapes and sanctuary sites. Her pictures are reminiscent of long forgotten times. It is as if we could sense the ancient inhabitant’s feelings - their joys and sorrows.

We are offerig the first prints of the images she now released from this series exclusively in this online exhibit. Her photographs are available as classical silver-gelatin prints in different sizes. Contact us for more information on current availabilities.

GEORGES YAMMINE - MOMENTS IN HARMONY

Lucerne 2018

Georges Yammine was born in a small town in Lebanon.He studied the violin in Germany and Austria and is a member of the West Eastern Divan Orchestra under the baton of Daniel Barenboim and since 1999 and of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra since 2009. Yammine is not only a professional musician but also a “traveling photographer,” as he likes to call himself.He was inspired to capture the world that surrounds him with a second artistic instrument. In addition to his violin he also always takes a camera when he goes on tour. Experimenting with movements, rhythm and harmony he visualizes musical connections.   He discovered a passion for photography during his concert tours. Wanting to capture and preserve the motifs and special moments which he encountered, he was increasingly fascinated by the art of taking pictures. He taught himself how to control the light by choosing the right exposure and aperture, then creating a composition with an interesting “harmony”.   What started as a playful experiment has lead to his second artistic career. In photography, like in music, you have to control many things at the same time with a certain sensitivity. The love of making music and the passion of photography became a way of expression that he had always been looking for.   In 2014 he published a book on the West East Divan Orchestra for their 15th anniversary entitled „The Spark of Hope“. It contains portraits of his fellow musicians and maestro Daniel Barenboim, but also beautiful still lives of musical instruments that highlight his love for shadow play and poetic arrangements. He also is looking for themes and motifs outside oft he concert halls when traveling the world on his tours. Fascinated by choreography he has been experimenting with movements and is looking to find an interpretation of dance and music in his very own imagery.   The search for a home is also a theme that continues to follow Yammine on his many travels. He combines his own feeling of belonging with a search fort he mythological town called Babylon. From this cosmopolitan city the wisdom of the East was spread out to the rest of this world. „I carry my home in my heart“ says Yammine. Since 2011 he has been showing his photograph sin exhibitions in Qatar, USA, Germany and Austria. This is is first presentation in Switzerland.   During the Lucerne Festival Yammine will be performing with the West eastern Divan Orchestra August 21st and 22nd at KKL, Lucerne.  

SEBASTIAN COPELAND - A VANISHING WORLD

Lucerne 2018

For this year’s spring exhibition Bernheimer Fine Art Photography will be showing

Sebastian Copeland: "A Vanishing World" at the gallery in Haldenstrasse 11, Lucerne.

On display will be a collection of photographs by Sebastian Copeland. This is the most comprehensive collection of Sebastian Copeland’s photographic work on ice, comprising ten year’s worth of expeditions across the most distant and forbidding regions on earth. It offers a unique glimpse into this other world, right here on Earth.

Most of the exhibited photographs by the award-winning photographer originated from his last expedition across the polar regions. Captured high on arctica and antarctica, these photos depict the open vastness of a world void of life whose only features are ones left by the wind on the ice, and the clouds in the sky. The features of the snowy and icy scenery—called “sastrugi”— are sculpted by the 160 km/h strong wind into rich and unique patterns. The abstract organic shapes, reminiscent of paintings or graphic art, all but blur the gap between natural and human art. The two are in fact profoundly symbiotic: these images remind us of a human spirit in the deepest and most desolate areas of the world, places which had, until Copeland’s, never seen a human footprint.

The vast, untouched white and blue surfaces convey clarity, peace and silence. These are pictures of a remote world, forever changing, far from human eyes.

Presently the desolate polar regions, both North and South are threatened by global warming. The ice melts faster in these regions than anywhere else in the world and climate change with all its disastrous consequences is especially evident. Massive icebergs, the size of city blocks, collapse down into the sea, and glaciers pour inexorably into the ocean. In short: the polar regions are at threat.

Sebastian Copeland is a world-re-known environmental activists, with focus on climate change specific to the polar regions. He is a board member of “Global Green USA”, the US affiliate of Michael Gorbatschov’s Green Cross International. Besides a sustainable lifestyle, personal engagement as well as responsibility is a huge priority. In the context of climate change discussions Sebastian Copeland recognises a fundamental communication problem; the use of language can often constitutes the greatest obstacle to an emotional connection. Therefore for Sebastian Copeland it is a logical step to support his activities as an environmentalist with his photographic works. The Polar Regions are foreign to most people. Geographically separate, they rather resemble a distant planet. Sebastian Copeland uses his photographs as a method to communicate his impressions and experiences gained in the Polar regions. With the help of his artistic means Copeland connects the viewer with the remote ice world, awakening awareness as well as an emotional response. He helps people to fall in love with this world, because to save something one loves is considerably easier. Sebastian Copelands photographs have an immediate effect on us.

MAT HENNEK - WOODLANDS

Lucerne 2017

In Woodlands, Mat Hennek presents genuine portraits of trees, the results of numerous hikes through various forests in Europe and the USA. Hennek sets out to discover extraordinary places in remote and often difficult to access areas, traveling on the road beyond human civilization for days. He removes spatial landmarks, alternately erasing the ground and horizon to unhinge any sense of direction. Light and shadow, pattern and structure build up to an impressionistic hymn—infinite, without a center, without beginning or end.

Hennek presents the woods as a divine, mystical architecture which we experience as well as see. Through a graphic style that sublimates the landscape into pure abstraction, he eliminates the border between painting and photography, revealing the soul of a landscape—one that is unique, indivisible and an integral part of nature. 

SUZIE MAEDER - SEEING MUSIC

Lucerne 2017

Born in Lucerne in 1948, Suzie Maeder moved to London in 1969 to study photography where she graduated with a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art in 1973. In 1982 she was awarded the Commendation Prize of the City of Lucerne. As a freelance photographer she was particularly drawn to the world of classical music and worked for decades with orchestras such as the English Chamber and the London Symphony Orchestra as well as with composers, conductors and musicians. Her work was published worldwide and shown in numerous exhibitions. Well known recording companies used her photographs on LP- and CD covers.  

So absorbed did she become in that world of sound, she eventually began to ‘see music’. This new perception encouraged her to try to capture the exciting sensation of ‘seeing’ in her work. Discovering that the play of light and shade made piano keys appear like a utopian landscape spurred her on to experiment with more instruments and show them in a totally new form. In 1994, her series on musical instruments, ‘Resonance’, was exhibited in the Bell Park Museum in Kriens/Lucerne and was published at the same time in the official programme for the International Music Festival, Lucerne. In 1998, a commission by The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group inspired her to bring her innovative vision to the photography of scores.

These pictures, together with the ‘Resonance’ series, were exhibited under the title ‘Seeing Music’ in London’s Hiscox Gallery in 2001. The pianist Evgeny Kissin remarked that “looking at Suzie’s images of musical instruments and scores opens up a completely new dimension of listening to music with one’s eyes. Her pictures are a constant surprise and reminder that perception is infinite.”

Coinciding with this year’s Lucerne Festival, a selection of these music photographs by Suzie Maeder will be shown at Bernheimer Fine Art, Haldenstrasse 11. She printed the pictures exclusively in the classic process on silver gelatin paper in her dark room. Exhibiting in her home town has an added and special meaning for the photographer. The art collector Angela Rosengart wrote: “As a ten year old in the late Fifties Suzie visited our Gallery Rosengart which was then situated at Haldenstrasse 11. To the astonishment of my father Siegfried she appeared alone - without adult accompaniment – and self-confidently looked at the paintings with intense interest and knowledge. Now, as a renowned photographer, she is returning to the same address to present her work to the public.”

LUCIEN CLERGUE - POÉSIE EN NOIR ET BLANC

Lucerne 2017

From May 4 to July 8 Bernheimer Fine Art presents the photo exhibition „Poetry in Black and White“ by French photographer  Lucien Clergue, deceased in 2014. The exhibition shows a selection of photographs from 50 years work.Born in Arles in 1934, Lucien Clergue referred to himself throughout his entire life as an artist in photography, unlike his photo reporter colleagues. From his early twenties on he adamantly insisted on keeping his artistic liberty, declining repeated offers of the media, however tempting they might have been.

His friend Pablo Picasso recognized the significance and artistic value of Lucien Clergue’s work  at an early stage and compared his nude photographs of the 1950’s to works of famous artists such as Renoir, Manet and Velazquez. Jean Cocteau, another close friend of his, described Clergue as the “poet with a camera”. Lucien Clergue’s photography speaks a  timeless language, his work is of  great artistic validity. He was a pioneer, an individualist, his art was manifold and he pursued his path undetteredly. The female nude belongs to one of his most famous themes. With a playful hand he succeeds in blurring the boundaries of art and photography. His “Zebra-nudes”, where he experimented with the effects of the Strobosko-pen, are as widely known as his early works “Nu de la mer”, where female bodies lie embedded in the dunes, alike rocks awash in the movements of the sea. Foregoing all technical aides, his sole tools were the daylight, water, sand, the sea and the female body.

His work includes pictures of his native country. Bullfights, landscapes of the Camargue, sand-tracks, jesters and gypsies. His home country and the Mediterranean culture inspired his art work from the beginning.In 2007 Lucien Clergue was the first photographer to be elected a  member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 2015 he was honored with a grand retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris, its curator none other than his long-lasting companion Christian Lacroix.

His photographs are represented in numerous well-known collections worldwide,  such as at the Museum of Modern Art New York, at the Art Institute of Chicago, at the Bibliothèque Nationale,  Paris, at the Centre Pompidou as well as the Picasso Museum in Paris, at the Museum für Gestaltung,  Zürich, at the Musée de l’Elisée , Lausanne, at the Museum Folkwang,  Essen; at the Museum Ludwig,  Köln as well as at the Isreal Museum,  Jerusalem. Bernheimer Fine Art represents the artist Lucien Clergue since 2003 in Germany and in Switzerland

VERONICA BAILEY - MEMORIES WITHIN THE ARCHIVES

Lucerne 2017

Veronica Bailey is a British Fine Art photographer based in London, specialising in visiting archives and producing photographic series with emphasis on conceptual thinking and historical narrative. Her work continues to explore nostalgia for the threatened forms of human communication and knowledge dissemination and the lure of traditional forms of paper and script in a monotonously digitized age.

In her photographs Bailey works with everyday life objects, which have been carefully arranged. Books and letters are composed in ways that seem to resemble sculptures of geometrical forms. Sometimes traces of text are visible, but the context of the works remains enigmatic. The viewer has to reflect on the photographs in order to find a personal way of interpreting the works.

Bernheimer Fine art is showing a selection from her following series:

In 2003 Bailey won the Jerwood Photography Award for the 2 Willow Road Series featuring the abstract photographs of books from the National Trust library of the modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger and his wife Ursula Blackwell.

Postscript series 2005, documents a small but revealing archive of letters and telegrams (1937 –1945) written by model/muse/photographer Lee Miller during her years as US war correspondent in World War II and British Surrealist artist Roland Penrose (1900-1984) prior to their marriage in 1947.

Hours of Devotion & Shelf Life series 2007 delves into the Coutts bank staff library on the Strand producing monumental works inspired by 19th century bookbinding and philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906).

The Modern Myths series featuring newspapers, highlighting the visual language between human nature, war, money and power in the media.

Veronica Bailey was featured in several solo shows in UK, USA, Korea, Canada, Germany.

Her Postscript series is represented in the Victoria & Albert Museum London and other UK and international Collections.

JAN C. SCHLEGEL - UNFORGETTABLE TRACES

Lucerne 2015

Bernheimer Fine Art is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by photographer Jan C. Schlegel in Switzerland.

Jan C. Schlegel portrays the beauty and dignity of people he has met on his trips to Africa and Asia. The results are powerful and intimate portraits that entice, captivate and challenge the viewer. The pictures shown in this exhibition bear witness to the photographer’s special encounters with these unique people.

Since 1998 Schlegel has been tirelessly travelling to over 60 countries looking for cultural diversity beyond the “Coca- Cola and T-Shirt culture”. On his travels the artist observed the rapid decline of cultural traditions, and an increasing change to the way of life within tribes due to globalisation. These inexorable changes inspired Schlegel to capture his impressions, immortalise these people and preserve traditions in his portraits. Thus he not only creates artistic photographs, but also preserves unique pieces of art in the people themselves. None of people photographed wear special make-up or were asked to dress up before the photographs were taken. Nothing is staged and nothing is faked. They were all captured in their own familiar environments. The only stylistic device Schlegel uses is a simple grey background to emphasise their timeless dignity and focus the attention on the person.

The titles showing the age and the name of every person reveal how much time the artist spent getting to know his sitter. One image is dedicated to Biwa (44 years), the prestigious warrior of the Karo tribe in Ethiopia with the scars to display his courage and power, who proudly carries a crocodile on his shoulders. Another example is Nale (18 years), a daughter of the tribal elders, who is wearing an impressive ear decoration that represents her substantial dowry. For Monteria (10 years), Schlegel was struck by her radiantly blue eyes, but had to ask for permission from her parents for nearly five days before he was able to photograph her.

Each portrait tells a story; a memorable moment for the photographer, but a rare, personal insight into the person being photographed. Their lives are inscribed on their bodies, in their dress and their character can be imagined by the penetrating expression in their eyes. However, in the end, they are enigmatic portraits, offering an empty space in a world where everything can be decoded. And yet it is the mysterious, inscrutable and intangible quality of these figures, emphasised by the harsh contrast of the sepia-turquoise colouring, which gives these portraits a majestic, eternal quality. Thus, Schlegel contemplates on the beauty of humans beyond any cultural differences or stereotypes.

The black and white photographs are taken using a 4 x 5 field camera (Ebony SV45 Ti) on traditional film (Kodak Tmax 400). The Negatives are developed in Kodak D76 Developer 1+1 dilution. Nothing is digitally edited, and the pictures are enlarged on fibre base photographic paper (Efke Varicon Classic FB) to either 50 x 60 cm or 77 x 86 cm. Afterwards, each photographic print is partly toned with Schlegel’s own mixture. Over two years the artist has personally developed this mixture, which gives the photographs an added strength and depth. Often this process takes several hours and turns out differently with each print, making each print completely unique. To guarantee durability and enhance the depth in the shadows each picture is then Selen toned and mounted on 2mm solid aluminium.

VANESSA VON ZITZEWITZ - APPEARANCES AND AESTHETICS

Munich 2015

For the first time Galerie Bernheimer will showcase a cross section of Vanessa von Zitzewitz’s work which consists of a selection of nudes and portraits.

Vanessa von Zitzewiz was born in 1970 in Hamburg and grew up in France, Monaco and the USA. She studied at the renowned “Parsons School of Design” in Paris, where, early on, her artistic talent was discovered and nurtured.

Von Zitzewitz gained photographic commissions from fashion and jewellery companies who made use of her extraordinary talent and great energy and freshness to photograph their advertising campaigns. For the 150th anniversary of Cartier she photographed a series of pictures called “untamed-ungezähmt”. Exhibitions in New York, Paris, Rome, London, Berlin, Tokyo and Los Angeles and the publication of six books were the result of a prolific collaboration of the young photographer with the historic jewellery manufacturer and watchmaker. Understandably, this was a significant breakthrough in her career. Commissions by Graff followed and resulted in five more publications and a post as the company’s main photographer for their promotional campaigns. This position she held for many years.

Together with her promotional work Vanessa von Zitzewitz is also known for her portraits of celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr, Gianni Agnelli and Carla Bruni – they have all posed in front of her camera. She has also photographed movie stars, fashion icons as well as front-ranked political personalities. Von Zitzewitz possesses the ability to capture the personality of her sitter.

In recent years the artist has dedicated herself increasingly to nude photography. Her virtuosity, as well as the combination of elegance and harmony, are at the heart of what makes her photographs so attractive. She stages her sitters with style, thus creating photographs of utmost beauty. The most recent series demonstrate her talent to depict the naturalness of her sitters while celebrating the nude figure. In the series “Dancing with Elephants”, as well as in her portraits of nudes that were shot underwater, she reveals the grace of her models and the poeticness of the female body. Both of these series are featured, for the first time at our exhibition: “APPEARENCES AND AESTHETICS”.

Her photographic travels inspired her, but also made her ask questions. As such von Zitzewitz is also wildly known as a philanthropist who uses her Art to fund and support international humanitarian aid projects. The connections she has made as photographer to celebrities enabled her to publish in 1999 her portrait photobook “Monachrome” whose proceeds were donated to the Monegasque Red Cross. In 2008 she published “Slaughterhouse Angels”, which included powerful images of the life of Thai street children. The proceeds of the book sales went directly to the “Human Development Foundation Mercy Center” in Bangkok, which is home to 200 street children. For this project von Zitzewitz was awarded by the UNESCO.

From 2013 Galerie Bernheimer has exclusively represented Vanessa von Zitzewitz. Her work has been successfully showcased at art fairs in London, Paris and Geneva.

She lives with her husband and her son in Monaco.

HORST P. HORST - FASHION IN COLOUR

Munich 2015

Bernheimer Fine Art Photography presents the exhibition HORST P. HORST – FASHION IN COLOUR in the Munich Gallery, Brienner Straße 7.

This is the third exhibition Bernheimer Fine Art Photography have shown in cooperation with the Horst Estate, Miami, but it is the first public exhibition, along with the Retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, to display colour photographs by the artist. This exhibition also marks Blanca Bernheimer’s appointment to exclusively represent the Horst Estate in mainland Europe.

Horst P. Horst is one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century and was internationally renowned, particularly for his portrait and black and white fashion photography. He is regarded as a master in the history of fashion photography, and many of his photos, such as Mainbocher Corset (1939), are icons of classic photography.

In 1931 Horst started his artistic career at French Vogue in Paris. The 1930’s were a dynamic and formative decade for the evolution of colour photography. In 1935 Kodak Kodachrome, the first colour photographic film that allowed for rich, nuanced scale of natural colours, was released. Horst immediately took advantage of the possibilities of this new technology to become a successful photographer. He was most prolific from the late 1930’s through to the early 1950’s, shooting over ninety magazine covers for magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair and American Condé Nast. Many of these cover photos, for example Muriel Maxwell, ensemble by Sally Victor, bag by Paul Flato, sunglasses by Lugene, 1939, Barbara ‘Babe’ Cushing Mortimer Paley, dress by Traina-Norell, 1946 or Jean Patchett, bathing suit by Brigance, 1951 can also be viewed as impressive stand alone photographs. It is these images of famous models and Hollywood actresses wearing the latest designer fashions that manage to convey a sense of effortless style. The photographs’ elegance, spontaneity and fresh poses enhance the glimpse into the American Dream that Horst captured.

Whilst his black and white photography is charaterised by a dramatic use of light and shadow, Horst’s colour photographs juxtapose bold primary colours to create a strong contrast. His compositions make sensational bright, clear photographs that have a timeless quality and appeal, as well as offering a snapshot of American life of the period. 

Unlike his famous black and white photographs, Horst’s colour photographs have never been publicly exhibited until now because they remained with the magazines. At the time, photographers gave their Kodachrome film directly to the magazines and did not have the photographs printed separately. Only recently has the Condé Nast archive, founded in the 1920’s, opened its doors to the Horst Estate to choose a selection of the artist’s Kodachromes from the 1940’s and 1950’s for new editions to be printed. These works are considered to be a major discovery and addition to the artist’s oeuvre, as recognised by the Victoria & Albert Museum in their retrospective exhibition and the wide media acclaim this has received.

Now, over half a century after they were taken, these rare colour photographs that not only include fashion photos, such as those at the Victoria & Albert Museum, but additional interior and portrait photography, will be shown for the first time in HORST P. HORST – FASHION IN COLOUR in the Bernheimer Gallery in Munich, Brienner Straße 7.

CHRISTOPHER THOMAS - PARIS CITY OF LIGHT

Munich 2014

In the autumn of 2014 Bernheimer Fine Art Photography will be presenting the exhibition PARIS CITY OF LIGHT. Photographs by Christopher Thomas in their gallery at Brienner Strasse, Munich. Ira Stehmann is the curator of the exhibition and editor of the forthcoming monograph of Christopher Thomas’s Paris photographs. The book will be published by Prestel Verlag and will be launched at the opening of the exhibition.

As an artist, Christopher Thomas has established a reputation above all with his city portraits: silent photos of city scenes, taken with a large-format camera and printed on hand-made laid paper. The film is a black-and-white type 55 film by Polaroid.

The first of his city portraits was the cycle Münchner Elegien (Munich Elegies), which was shown in the Museum of Photography in Munich in 2005 (published by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag, 2005). This was followed by the series New York Sleeps, which he created between 2001 and 2009. The companion publication, New York Sleeps. Photographs by Christopher Thomas, published by Prestel Verlag in 2009 (6th edition 2012), was awarded the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis (German Photobook Prize).

The Polaroid series Venedig. Die Unsichtbare (Venice in Solitude), published by Prestel Verlag in 2012, was created in 2011 and 2012 and was shown worldwide in galleries and at trade fairs.

Thomas´s new series Paris City of Light will be shown at Bernheimer Fine Art Photography in Munich for the first time. On this occasion, Prestel Verlag will be launching the new publication.

With all its beauty, its intoxicating light and its flair, the French capital is an invitation to create a photographic love poem to the city. Inspired by this thought, and following on from his city portraits Venedig. Die Unsichtbare (Venice in Solitude, 2011), New York Sleeps, 2009), and Münchner Elegien (Munich Elegies, 2005), Christopher Thomas set off in 2013 and 2014 to capture Paris, the great cultural capital and the first metropolis of the modern age, in auratic and brilliantly composed pictures. He takes us on a journey through the Paris of the past, which we recognise from the countless photos from the nineteenth century. He shows us the bridges, the parks and the alleys, continuing his stroll along the quays, past the magnificent palaces and the landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Les Invalides and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. He reveals to the visitor a silent city, devoid of people and cars. The pictures are untypical, and appear unreal and dreamlike, especially for those who know Paris with its ubiquitous crowds of tourists at all seasons; last year they numbered 87 million.

Like Eugène Atget before him, Christopher Thomas sets off like a flâneur on foot with his heavy camera equipment. His is a gaze filled with curiosity, enquiring, unprejudiced, delighting in discoveries and questioning. He generally prefers the early morning hours, when the city seems still to be asleep and reveals its structure in silence, or the time just before sunset, when the light cloaks the buildings and bridges in a mystic air that makes their structures glow. His equipment includes a selection of large-format Cambo Wide cameras, a tripod, a dark velvet cloth, and numerous packs of Polaroid film. Before Polaroid ceased production in 2008, Thomas was able to purchase a stock of film material, which he continues to make use of to this day. In his new series of works, much more than in his other city portraits, he permits himself to experiment; this is a result of the irregularities of the Polaroid film due to its age. It is gradually becoming unreliable, which often leads to solarisation and inversion. In additional to the usual positive, the film the photographer uses, type 55, also contains a negative. By virtue of the large negative (4 x 5 inches), Thomas can ensure that the prints (pigment prints on hand-made laid paper by Arches) match up to his demanding requirements as regards the wealth of detail and the finest nuances of tone. The negatives are very sensitive and have to be treated in a sodium sulphite bath after developing. Thomas is also a photographer of the glamorous consumer world who works with the very latest digital cameras. Here, however, he uses a technical process dating from the very beginnings of photography that includes a great deal of “craftsmanship” and “deceleration” in the working process.

Christopher Thomasʼs personal viewpoint, his sensitivity and his craftsmanship result in pictures which we can regard as a metaphor for the modern capital during the nineteenth century, which to this day has lost none of its unique charisma.

Christopher Thomas is one of the few photographers who repeatedly succeeds in arousing a sense of wonder in the viewer with his auratic, brilliantly composed and technically perfectly executed pictures – and who moreover presents us with an aesthetic pleasure and a work of timeless poetry. His photographic love poem provides a visual antidote to the hurly-burly of the metropolis and at the same time draws a veil in front of the sober reality of fast-food restaurants, traffic chaos and modern architectural sins.

Concurrently with the exhibition in Munich, Bernheimer Fine Art Gallery will show works from the artists four city portraits in their Swiss branch in Lucerne. The exhibition City Portraitswill run from 26th September to 8th November 2014.

MICHEAL KENNA - LIGHTS ON ASIA

Munich 2014

In Spring 2014 Bernheimer Fine Art Photography will be presenting Light on Asia, an exhibition of black and white photographs by the famous photographer Michael Kenna, based on his journeys through Asia in their gallery at 7. Brienner Strasse, Munich.

Michael Kenna set himself the objective of visiting remote places and capturing them with his camera. His technique is to immerse himself fully in his subject matter, and this intense artistic involvement with his subjects and the care taken in setting up the shots is evident in the exhibited photographs, which show Kenna’s feeling for atmosphere and composition. The deliberate way in which Kenna sets about capturing the “soul” of his subjects, lends his photographs a calm, meditative quality, whose mystery is enhanced by Kenna’s preference for taking photographs at dusk and night-time. The mountains, lakes, bays and cities shown in these photographs have a dreamlike atmosphere and even familiar subjects are presented as though they were new discoveries, opening unforeseen worlds to the viewer. Nothing is superfluous or left to chance in these carefully arranged photographs.

In this third solo exhibition of around fifty photographs by Michael Kenna, the visitor is invited to take a sensational trip through Asia, from Japan, South Korea, China and India to Vietnam. On this journey we pass through the “Huangshan Mountains” in southern China, with their bizarre projecting rock formations, gnarled pines and steep mountain slopes shrouded in a dense sea of clouds, and follow the course of the “Lijang River”, with its clear waters and sandbanks, fringed by steep mountains and spectacular rocks. In addition to capturing the different shapes of Nature, Kenna also shows us the foremost industrial city in China: Shanghai with its skyline studded with iconic buildings such as the Oriental Pearl Tower and Jin Mao Tower sparkling in the darkness of the night. From Japan, land of the rising sun, Kenna brings his impressions of Hokkaido Island, the northernmost of the four main islands of Japan, with its natural landscapes, mountains, woods, rivers, active volcanoes and thermal springs. Hokkaido has a temperate climate during the summer months, but Michael Kenna’s pictures show us the diversity and beauty of the island’s winter and its dramatic snowscapes. Near Mount Fuji, a favourite subject for Japanese artists, is“Lake Yamanaka”, the inspiration for one Kenna’s most powerfully atmospheric photographs.

On his travels to South Korea, Kenna seems to have been particularly inspired by the landscape of Shinan, famous for its numerous unspoilt islands, where, over a period of two years, he produced some of his most graphic photographs, published in 2013 in the catalogue “Shinan”.

Kenna’s India photographs, by contrast, show deserted beaches and cities, which provide a vivid contrast to his pictures of the world-renowned tea plantations in and around Munnar, former summer resort of the British Government in South India and the important area for the production of tea and spices. In Vietnam the photographer concentrated on studying the “Ha Long Bay”, the so-called “Bay of the Descending Dragons”, situated in the North of the country and renowned for its two thousand or so chalk rocks, mostly inhabited islands, an area known for fishing and oyster farming.

For over twenty years Michael Kenna takes photographs using a manually operated Hasselblad camera. Instead of editing his images digitally Kenna prefers the darkroom process, which is an essential part of the “hand-crafted” nature his work. Apart from a few prints, his photographs measure 20 x 20 cm.