A MOTTO FOR 2016

"...there should be some discrimination and selection based on quality rather than novelty".

Landscape, Untitled #3

AN EXCLUSIVE OFFER

Something special...
(Fenway Park, Boston, MA, 2012)

   
   One of my projects for 2016 is an exclusive offer for the readers of my blog(s). At first I was planning to do a "Print of the Month" offering but then I decided to offer you an exclusive portfolio instead. A portfolio with twelve fine art photographs, exclusively done for this portfolio in a very limited edition of twelve portfolios (plus three artist's copies). Every month throughout the year I will choose on of my photographs to be included into the portfolio - and it will be not a photograph done for one of my other projects but one solely made for this portfolio. I don't yet know in which direction my work will drift but I can assure you that I will keep the highest standards (you can see some of my work at my website and on my photoblog). And at the end collecting fine art photographs has a lot to do with trusting too...

So this is my offer to you: 

Limited Portfolio Edition (in an edition of twelve plus three artist's copies) consisting of:

• Twelve Fine Art Giclée Prints exclusively done for this portfolio
• picture size (appr.) 21 x 27 cm, matted to 40 x 50 cm
• numbered, dated and signed in recto
• Certificate of Authenticity in verso
• in a clamshell portfolio box, numbered and signed

The portfolio will be finished in December 2016 and delivered end of 2016. The price for one portfolio is € 1,200,- (including shipping) with a downpayment when ordering of € 300,-.

If you want more informations about this project or want to purchase on of this exclusive artwork please contact me at info[at]innerlightgallery.org.

A Happy New Year to all of you. Hope to hear from you soon ;-)

Chris DeMatté

MY (VIRTUAL) COLLECTION

  Although I was never running after any trends and never cared about the so-called “mainstream“, in the more than thirty years, in which I was working as a photographer and artist, a lot of artists have affected my own work. Artists such as René Magritte, Salvador Dalí and M.C. Escher drew me early in the spheres of surrealism. Sigmund Freud also exerts) a not too small influence (after all, I'm from Vienna ;-)). And in the the photographic world and there where and are some artists who were more or less beacons on my own photographic way. 

  Would I have the time (and the money) to have my own collection, these artists certainly an integral part of it. I want to present to you a "Top 10" list of these artists, my own, subjective and virtual collection. Yes, it is predominantly so-called "classic". "Hip Artist" (such as Cindy Sherman and Andreas Gursky) you will not find here. And that has the simple reason that I can do very little with the vast majority of works of contemporary photography. But if you are interested in building your own collection, then the works by artists of my "Top 10" are certainly not only a good investment but (and especially) also works with a certain aesthetic and artistic standards. At least in my opinion...

Ansel ADAMS (1902-1984)

No serious photographer (and collector) can ignore him.  He influenced a whole generation of landscape photographers, he was prominently involved in giving photography her place in the art world. For some time his picture „Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico“ was the most expensive photograph. His books on the technical aspects of photography where, at least for my generation, more or less „the Bible“.

Ansel Adams, “Aspen, Northern New Mexico“, 1958

W. Eugene SMITH (1918-1978)

An American photojournalist, renowned for the dedication he devoted to his projects and his uncompromising professional and ethical standards. Smith developed the photo essay into a sophisticated visual form and he was obsessed with photography. When he joined Magnum in 1955 he started a project to document the city of Pittsburgh. The project was supposed to take him three weeks, but spanned three years and encompassed tens of thousands of photographic negatives. It was too large to ever be shown...

W. Eugene Smith, “Tomoko Vemura in Her Bath“, 1971

Yousuf KARSH (1908-2002)

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he is "one of the greatest portrait photographers of the twentieth century, [who] achieved a distinct style in his theatrical lighting“. When I was at art college we always tried to copycat this distinct lighting when doing portraits. For sure you have seen many of his famous portraits (eg of Albert Einstein, Hemingway or Winston Churchill).

Yousuf Karsh, “Humphrey Bogart“, 1946

Robert CAPA (1913-1954)

The „founder“ of modern war photography, a (co-)founder of the Magnum Agency (the first  cooperative agency for worldwide freelance photographers). Archetype of at least three generations of war photographers. Maybe not technical perfect or artistic but nonetheless somebody one can not ignore in the history of photography.

Robert Capa, “Pablo Picasso and his wife Francoise Gillat“, France, 1948

Aleksander M. RODCHENKO (1891-1956)

One of the founders of constructivism. Rodchenko was one of the most versatile Constructivist artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles - usually high above or down below - to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition.

Alexander Rodchenko, “In Russia“, 1920s

Robert MAPPLETHORPE (1946-1989)

known for his sometimes controversial large-scale, highly stylized black and white photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. 

Robert Mapplethorpe, “Ken Moody and Robert Sherman“, 1984

Herb RITTS (1952-2002)

was an American photographer who concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculptures. Most famous for his fashion and celebrities pictures he too (like Mapplethorpe) formed the photographic style of the 1980s and 90s.

Herb Ritts, "Dizzy Gillespie, Paris", 1989

Sebastião SALGADO (born 1944)

is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. He has traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press publications and books. Touring exhibitions of this work have been presented throughout the world. I still can remember the first time I saw his work. We where standing in front of it an where wandering how he could achieve the tonality in his pictures...

Sebastião Salgado, “Churchgate Station, Bombay, India“, 1995

Jerry N. UELSMANN (born 1934)

an American photographer and forerunner of photomontage. Uelsmann is a master printer, producing composite photographs with multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work. He uses up to a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final dreamlike images.

Jerry N. Uelsmann, “Untitled“, 1976

Erik JOHANSSON (born 1985)

is a Swedish-born who creates surreal images by recombining photographs and other materials. He captures ideas by combining images in new ways to create what looks like a real photograph, yet with logical inconsistencies to impart an effect of surrealism. Some finished images are the combination of hundreds of original photographs...

Erik Johansson, “Dreamwalking in between worlds“, 2014

Michael KENNA (born 1953) 

is an English photographer best known for his black & white, unusual, landscapes with ethereal light achieved by photographing at dawn or at night with exposures of up to 10 hours. Most famous and enchanting are his pictures from Japan.

 Michael Kenna, "Kussharo Lake Tree, Study 6, Kotan, Hokkaido, Japan", 2007

   

   As I said before, these are some artists, whose work I would collect myself if i would have time, space (and, of course, money). Laking this possibility on the walls there is hanging (besides some posters of photo exhibitions of some of the above mentioned) my own artwork. Maybe you want to have a look at it too. You can find some of it at my >website and my >photoblog...

Chris Dematté, “Falls of Falloch“, 1999 

[from the “Avalon“ Portfolio]

Work in progress: PROJECT "FRONTLINE"

A few weeks ago I started with my new project called "Frontline". The background of this project is the WW2 Battle of Moscow, which took place  (according to official history) from Sept. 30, 1941 to April 2, 1942. Today it is seen as the largest battle between two armies of all time. The Battle of Moscow marked the first time Hitler's armies failed to triumph with their Blitzkrieg tactics and the German army never completly recovered from that defeat which is seen by many contemporary historians as the ultimate turning point of WW2.

Along the frontline of this battle there are today a lot of memorials and monuments remembering the heroic fight of the Red Army to stop the Fasiscts. With my project I want to document some of them. Seeing photography as a meaning of expression of one's feelings I am planing to "manipulate" my pictures in a way that they express the emotions I had while making the pictures. Here are first test to try out how to achieve this...

You can find more pictures at my photoblog.

At the "Alley of the Heros", Ruza

Monument to the "Sibirian Defenders of Moscow", Snegiri

Monument to the "Defenders of Moscow's Sky" , near Moshaisk

The "Stop Line" at Snegiri

The "Panfilov Warriors", Nelidovo

HOW PHOTOGRAPHY LEARNED ABOUT DYING

The development of war photography in the interwar period on the example of Robert Capa's "Falling Soldier“

September 5, 1936

   Spain, near the village Cerro Muriano on the Cordoba front: The 24-year-old Republican militiaman Federico Borrell García, making an assault on the fascist positions is hit by a bullet in the head and fatally wounded. The then 22-year-old photographer Robert Capa has captured this moment of dying and simultaneously had created his most famous photo - the "Falling Soldier".

   Many superlatives have been striving for a description of this recording. Already at the first publication in the French magazine Vu on September 23, 1936, it was called the "most exciting and immediate snapshot of the war" that had ever succeeded. Russel Miller describes them as "...the greatest photograph was ever taken" and the German weekly magazine Stern as the "...the image of the anti-war movement par excellence". For Carol Squiers, a curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, it is "the first compelling action shot taken during wartime".

   But how did it come that this (blurred and grainy, therefore from a technical standpoint, a bad one) picture of a dying one a (picture-)icon of the 20th century? And why did  this picture with the Magnum Photo Agency’s archive number CAR 36004 W000X1 / ICP154 became the archetypal image of war photojournalism? This question I would like to pursue and demonstrate how Capas recording became a symbol of an "other death" after the horrors of the First World War and how it became the role model for the genre of war photography, which continues to work until today.

Early war photography or "The absence of dying"

The ocularly characteristic of all photographs from all wars before the First World War was the absence of dying or the dead.

The Crimean War (1853-56) is generally seen as the first photographically documented war. The shots that the photographer Roger Fenton made of this war are characterized not only by the absence of death, but also by the absence of war as such: they only are showing the bearing life of the soldiers and portraits of officers. In the Crimean War, the propaganda potential of the photographic coverage had not yet been identified, the technical effort for the creation of images was immense and the way the images from the theater of war "home" was a long and laborious. Moreover, the newspapers of that time did not have the technical capabilities to reprint pictures, so the pictures were exhibited with a large time lag in galleries.

This absence of the dead changed somehow in the photographic coverage on the American Civil War (1861-65). While still, due to the bulky photographic equipment, the fighting itself is not mapped, however fight scenes were simulated and the photographers entered the battlefield, at least after the skirmishes. And the first shots of the fallen were made, e.g at the battlefield of Gettysburg, where Timothy O’Sullivan's recorded the death in a picture with the designated title "A Harvest of Death". The photographer could move largely free and any censorship were subjected.

The First World War brought a fundamental change here. "Embedded" Photographers and cameramen were the rule, independent reporters the exception. Photography and film were discovered both as a means of propaganda (for influencing of public opinion) as well as a means of warfare (reconnaissance), have been fully placed in the service of military and was centrally controlled. For all participants there was war propaganda and censorship bodies, such as in Germany, the "Bild- und Filmamt" (image and movie office) or in Austria, the "Kriegspressequartier" (war press bureau) (KPQ). Bravery and heroism were emphasized. But the war took place, particular in populary publications like the Illustrated War Chronicle of "Daheim", practically without dying or death. So, for example, in the first four volumes of the Illustrated War Chronicle "Daheim" there where published a total of 1,457 photographs, of which 21 photos showed wounded, 16 'heroes' graves, but only one photograph shows the body of a fallen German soldiers. The "absence of dead" was thus for the (propaganda) war photography during First World War the most striking feature - and was so diametrically to the experiences of the soldiers (and also of the civilians in the frontline areas). Because the First World War was the first "modern", "industrial" war and the use of newly developed weapons like large-caliber artillery, flamethrowers, submarines, poison gas and tanks called nearly ten million deaths and about 20 million wounded.

The wars of the "interwar period"

The First World War was often called "the war to end all wars" in contemporary times. On the one hand this term was used in propaganda purposes, in order to strengthen the war effort, but mainly it was a reaction to the horrors of this war and the hope that such wars would no longer happen due to the horrendous number of victims and the costs. However, a glance at the history books shows a very different picture. The "end all wars was to" went smoothly into a series of civil wars, national and colonial wars. From the Russian Civil War (1917-20) to the Polish-Soviet War (1920-21), from the Greek-Turkish War (1921-23) to the civil wars in China (1930) and Austria (1934), from the so-called "Chaco War" between Bolivia and Paraguay (1932-35) to the Abyssinian campaign of Italy (1935), wars took place every single day through the twenties and thirties. At the end of this "interwar period" was the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 and the Sino-Japanese war, which began in 1937 and lasted until the end of World War II.

In 1919 the Western world thought that an "era of democracy" ushered in, but instead a political and ideological split in three ways took place: the democratic, the socialist-communist and fascist. And these three directions are also reflected in cultural history.

History disintegrates into images, not into stories

"History disintegrates into images, not into stories" - this phrase from Walter Benjamin's "Arcades Project" can probably explain the principle of the cultural history of the 20th century, in particular for the so-called inter-war period from 1918 to 1939. This was influenced by the all-pervading process of "visualization" and  by the contrast between the "desire to forget" the war with all the fears and traumas and of the awakening of Modernism. The use of new technologies brought the "mass" instead of the individual to the center, through the introduction of rotary printing newspapers and magazines became mass media, as well as radio and film, there is an audiovisual socialization of a broad sector of the population. The (visual) mass media would shape the image of the reality. As early as 1927 Siegfried Kraucauer complained, that through the mass distribution of photographs there was instead reality only „pictures of reality“.

In 1919 the horrors of war, the traumatic experiences, were still too close to represent them directly in the visual media. During the First World War - especially given the unimaginable death toll of the trenches on the Western Front -the American writer Henry James firmly noted:

In all of this, the approach falls just as hard as the adherence to one's own thoughts using own words. The war has used up words; they have lost their power, they are spoiled. 

In place of the word images are now entering, or as the American journalist Walter Lippmann put it in 1922:

Today Photos possess for our imagination that authority which even approached the printed word and the spoken word before yesterday. They appear beyond measure real.

Photos of wars appeared since 1880 in daily and weekly magazines. But only in the interwar period came to a new form of mass media into being, weekly magazines in a high circulation. In France, Vu was first published in 1929, in the US Life (1936) and in the UK the Picture Post (1938), that brought also a radical change of the layout by reversing the weighting of pictures and texts. The technical development of photography favored this development: Through the invention of the 35mm camera ("Ur"-Leica 1914 by Oscar Barnak) and the 35mm film  a tool was given to the photographers that allowed them to work fast, mobile and unobtrusive, and an until then unknown form of "participating war reporting" originated, they increasingly emancipated from the role of the documentary. The traditional view of the photograph on the war was replaced by the photograph of the war and with the help of these new technical possibilities a new visual language was created. The proximity to the events was henceforth the central criterion of authenticity. Robert Capa's photographic documentation of the Spanish Civil War was therefore merely the logical consequence of all these developments. He was "just at the right time at the right place".

The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 was in many ways a novelty in the history of both the war and the war (picture) reporting. It was at the same time a civil war and an international conflict and war by proxy of the formative totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. Depending on the political camp people where fighting in Spain for democracy or fascism, communism or anarchism in order to rescue the Christian West from the Bolshevik danger or to save the freedom endangered by the fascist barbarism. And the Spanish Civil War also marked photographically and in propaganda ways a new level. The Spanish Civil War, therefore, became the first real media war: It was the first war to be extensively and freely photographed for a mass audience, and marks the establishment of modern photography was as we know It. In the press photograph it brought the breakthrough of „investigative journalism", a mixture of humanitarian appeals, documentary realism and sensation operation. Unlike in the First World War, the contracting fronts tried from the beginning to give the war a certain image and to include the propagandist media in the dispute.

Parvenus, adventurer, photojournalist

The Spanish Civil War brought also forth a new generation of war photographers. Photojournalist, adventurer and parvenus, who, equipped with the new fast cameras and a new self-image, operated  at the same frontline like the soldiers and personally stood for originality, integrity and authenticity of a story. Probably the most famous among them (and that which should characterize the war photojournalism for generations until today) was Robert Capa.

Robert Capa was born Endre Erno Friedmann on 22 October 1913 in Budapest. He was the second of three sons of a Jewish tailor family. Having already participated early in the left spectrum, he, participated on a demonstration against the Hungarian dictator Horthy, was arrested, and had to choose to leave Hungary or to be put on trial, after which he emigrated to Germany. In Berlin, he began studying journalism at the University of Political Science and worked as Photolaborant the Ullstein publishing house and in 1932-1933 as a photo assistant at the German Photo Service (Dephot). 1932 his first photographs of Leon Trotsky at a speech in Copenhagen were published. After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, he fled first to Vienna and then on to Paris. In order to sell his pictures better, he invented a rich in Paris living American photographer named "Robert Capa". After an editor uncovered the fraud, Friedmann took the invented name itself. In the Spanish Civil War Robert Capa documented the struggle of the anti-fascist forces against the fascist Falange. In 1938 he went to China and reported on the Chinese resistance to the Japanese occupation. 1939 Capa moved to the USA where he in 1946 received the American citizenship. During World War II he photographed as a war correspondent, inter alia, in North Africa, Sicily and the D-Day, the Allied invasion in Normandy. In 1947, Capa, with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour and George Rodger, founded the photo agency Magnum. He more and more tried to avoid war reporting. In 1948 he accompanied the creation of Israel with his camera and was an eyewitness of the outbreak of the War of Independence (and photographed again a war). In 1954 he returned to the war coverage, as Life urgently a photojournalist in Indochina needed…

"Falling Soldier"

Capas picture of a mortally wounded militiaman became the most influential image of the Spanish Civil War (and at the same time also the most controversial) par excellence, it became an icon of war photography. It appears like an image of the romantic painting of the 19th century (it was sometimes compared with Francisco Goya's "The Third of May, 1808“) with its picture elements - the open sky, shoot from low angel, the sun illuminates the scene, the landscape in the background, falling militiaman with the rifle slipping from his hand at the moment  -  and leaves a lot of space for diverse ideas and interpretations. Mira Beham, for example, says it had served for aestheticism and glorification of the Spanish Civil War and had more poetic than factual value, because it was a heroic mood image, the nobility and dignity, for the Spanish people fighting. In this sense, the picture was, however, more likely to be used as a means of propaganda.

But an icon of the war photograph Capas "Falling Soldier" became for other reasons. First of all, it was "the first compelling action shot taken during wartime", in the middle of the battlefield, made in the moment of death, a quick, "clean" death, taken under risk for the life of the photographer himself. In addition, the image is a counterpoint to the war memories of the soldiers of the First World War, which were influenced by the anonymous mass death by gas, machine-gun fire and artillery bombardment lasting for days. Thus, it is an archetypal symbol of war death, which does not fit to the experiences of the wars of the 20th century: The death of the young militiaman is heroic and tragic, his death has a meaning, because he died not in vain, he dies for the cause in which he believes, for which he fought. His death is aesthetic, clean, fast and takes place in a natural environment, under the open sky. The inclusion implies that such a death has its own special beauty.

The truth is the best picture.

Robert Capa coined with his photographic style (and probably also with his bohemian life) all subsequent generations of war correspondents. One of his principles was: "If your picture is not good enough, then you're not close enough."

He died on May 25, 1954 in Indochina when he stepped on a landmine. His last words were: "I'll go a little. Tell me if this continues.“ He died, as the American Society of Magazine Photographers noted in a posthumous appreciation, at work,"in a tradition founded by him, for which there is no other word than his name". 

This article is a revised version of a seminar work done during my history studies at Vienna University in 2006

FROM SILVER TO SILICON

My personal journey through (parts of) the History of Photography.

My personal (photographic) life is covering less than a quarter of the timespan of photography. Nevertheless I witnessed and took part in the most important transformations in it‘s history. This is a short and very personal journey through my photographic life...

A long and winding road...

   When in 1984 I did my MFA in Photography at the “Graphische“ in Vienna (which was founded in 1888, therefore being one of the oldest schools for photography worldwide) photography was in a climax. The technical development had reached a level which couldn‘t be exceled. At least we thought so - not realizing that the Eastman Company, better know as Kodak, was already working on a 1-megapixel-CCD-sensor for digital cameras, an item which would at the end completely change our (photographic) life. And will bring down the Eastman Company because they themselves didn‘t fully believe in digital photography.

   At the beginning of the 1980s the curriculum of photo colleges still contained things like retouching negatives. We made portraits with the 4x5 inch view camera, using big  tungsten light lamps for lightning. Being a student was also an financial matter. Films and paper was expensive, you always thought twice before making a print. Film speed was more or less limited to 27 DIN/400 ASA (anybody still knows ASA and DIN?). Everything above this was called push developing - and not very much appreciated by our teachers. We where mixing our own chemistry and spent whole days in the darkroom (which was especially nice in winter, when you didn‘t see any daylight during darkroom days). 

Bretagne. Early Morning. 

   

   We had our photographic “heroes“, Ansel Adams for those in landscape photography, Avedon for fashion, Mappelthorp and Herb Ritts where at the beginning of their careers,  Oliviero Toscani started his. controversial and much discussed advertising campaign for Benetton. Although photography was not seen by many people as “art“ (there was only one photo gallery in Vienna at this time) many of us where thinking about photography as art. And it was the high time of photojournalism too. After all pictures changed the public opinion on the Vietnam war (which let to the „embedded“ journalists in the Iraq war of 1991). There where magazines like Life and National Geography, like GEO and Stern each of us wanted to work for. Being invited to become a member of MAGNUM was the Holy Grail...

From my "Avalon" Portfolio

   At the beginning of my „career“ as an artist I did a lot of landscape photography which was quite a back braking undertaking. When I working on my „Avalon“ portfolio I was carrying about 25 kg of equipment for three weeks through the Highlands of Scotland. One needed at least a medium format camera (I for sure couldn‘t afford a 8x10 inch view camera at this time), a heavy tripod, a box full of filters (all shades of yellow to dark red, as Ansel Adams was teaching us). After that you spent hours, days, weeks in the darkroom, breathing in the healthy fumes, fighting with gradation, dotting and burning. And yes, I enjoyed this time. Very much so.

Just the basics. Add filters, heavy tripod, light meter...

   Then some curious thing called „digital photography“ emerged. I was trying to ignore it, avoid it. But at some moment one of my clients wanted to have the pictures not only as slides or prints but also as digital files. I survived thanks to scanning the negatives and saving them on a Photo CD. But when they needed the pictures from a conference in Vienna within two hours after the event took place at their headquarter in Brussels, well, that was the point in time when I had to do the step into the world of digital photography.

Lanzarote. A "hyprid" so to say. Negative scanned, printed on inkjet printer...

If you buy a piano you own a piano. If you by a camera you are photographer... 

Was it worth? Well, it is photography too. I am not missing this endless hours in the darkroom. With digital photography you have at the end much more possibilities (or, at least, can achieve the results much easier and faster). Yes, it was worth it. Even if it is nowadays much more complicated to be recognised as a „real“ photographer. 

Picts, or it doesn‘t happen. 

Digital photography has „democratized“ photography (and more or less destroyed the professional photographers business). Everybody (who owns a cellphone) is making pictures today. Every day in 2014 an average of 1.8 billion photos were uploaded to the internet, a total of 657 billions. Every two minutes humans take more photos than ever existed in the total 150 years ago (and that are only this which are uploaded, pictures which a on some SD-cards or other hard disc are not included). 

The only problem I can see with this flood of pictures: The important ones, the really good ones, these which matter, are not so easy to find. And a lot of pictures are lost because its so easy to delete them. In the times before digital photography no (serious) photographer ever destroyed his negatives or slides. Nowadays you just push the right button to get rid of them if you think the are not worth keeping. In this connection I very much like the story of Dirk Halstead who did a photo which became a cover of Time magazine and won him many awards (not because of the quality but because of the uniqueness): During Bill Clinton‘s 1996 presidential campaign, Halstead was at an fundraiser event a few days before the election, shooting photos right up until the end. Several months after the fundraiser, the news broke that Clinton had had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Searching his archive he came up with this particular photo which ended on the Time cover. He was shooting with a 35mm film SLR. His colleagues where shooting on digital - and deleted near identical images from their memory cards right after the event. 

My advice (maybe a little bit „old-school“): Never delete a picture. You never know if you might not need it some times in the future...

For me it was a long journey from the beginning of my photographic life until now. A journey which I enjoyed more often than not. A journey which is for sure not over yet...