The European artworks were selected by 6 curators representing 10 countries : Belgium and Holland curated by Els Barents, France by Fannie Escoulen, Germany by Frank Wagner, Hungary and Czech Republic by Kincses Károly, Spain and Portugal by Dr. Jorge Calado and UK and Ireland by Martin Barnes.
• Holland & Belgium
Romance with modernism and greatness ended with the 20th century. Today, most projects in photography focus on sustainability and identity in a highly volatile world. However, one often finds a new and delicate approach to these subjects. Photographers are not only investing great creative powers to imagine the characteristics of a globalizing world, but they are doing so in a surprisingly fresh and reflective way. The theme of the Dutch/Belgian exhibit is about the current perception and the imagination of such inner and outer spaces – in landscape, architecture, urbanism, as well as in the minds eye. It all seems to be about picturing the bigger subjects in a deliberate, but still light-footed way.
Photographers: Dirk Braeckman (B), Popel Coumou (NL), Geert Goiris (B), Scarlett Hooft Graafland (NL), Awoiska van der Molen (NL), Frank van der Salm (NL), Marijke van Warmerdam (NL)
• France
In literature, autofiction is a work in which an author invents a personality and a life for himself, while keeping his true identity, through his own name. The word fiction, from latin “fingere”, also means to invent, to feign, and to shape.
In photography, Claude Cahun, Antoine d’Agata, and others have implemented various autofictions to “shape” an artistic identity for themselves. The artists have taken themselves as the subject of their work to invent a destiny, develop a new self-representation and in turn create a “fiction of events and facts that are strictly real.”
Just like Alix Cléo-Roubaud, many photographers who express their innermost reality and who continue to perpetuate the tradition of “self-portrait” through the photographic medium, using autofiction, self-derision or autobiographical narrative, as tools displayed a deep quest for identity.
Self-portrait is always a ‘matter of concern’, and often the question of “who am I? ” turns into a “who is he? ” or a ” who is she? ” and casts doubts over the disclosed identity. This closeness to oneself can create a disturbing self-strangeness which can also fascinate, confuse or repel. When several self-portraits are exhibited together, these effects multiply and a question silently arises to the viewer: What do they all want? What do they expect from our gaze, our acknowledgement, our ability to identify?
This exhibition pays particular attention to a selection of French photography illustrating this practice.
Fannie Escoulen
• Hungary and Czech Republic
Photography in the 20th and 21st Centuries
In the first half of the 20th century, Hungary produced many internationally recognized photographers who remained relatively unknown in Hungary itself during their lifetimes. Some examples of these photographers include André Kertész, Robert Capa, Martin Munkacsi, Brassai and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. My first choice for this exhibit was André Kertész, the most prominent of the emigrés and a photographer of the highest quality. His influence has been vital in the development of both Hungarian and international photography. I have selected from his oeuvre early photographs taken in Hungary between 1914 and 1925.
The second aspect of my selection includes socially sensitive documentary photography, which was very strong in Hungary and the neighbouring east-central European countries, during a time of almost constant political oppression. Courageously presenting reality and representing it without political influence in these countries presented artists with a considerable human, artistic and existential challenge.
The final aspect of my selection was to see how the most important artistic movements of the given period were reflected in the selected artists’ works. I have intentionally selected atypical artists who not only succeeded within their individual schools of photography, but also shaped new and ground breaking trends.
The photographs to be presented in Dubai provide an overview on the one hand of the development of a period in central European photography and, on the other, of the social changes during which these artistic oeuvres were formed.
Károly Kincses
• Portugal and Spain
Two Latin countries comprise the Iberian peninsula, at the Western end of continental Europe: Portugal (area: 92 200 km2; population 10.5 million) and Spain (area: 506 000 km2; population: 47 million). Portugal became an independent country in the 12th century; Spain, a multinational and multilingual country, became united at the end of the 15th century. My brief is to present an overall view of 20th century and early 21st century photography through examples from both Spanish and Portuguese photographic traditions, starting with the work of Joshua Benoliel (Portuguese, 1873-1932), the greatest European photojournalist in the first two decades of the 20th century. There are both similarities and differences, but Portuguese photography remains, by far, the least known of the two. Portuguese photography appears gentle and sympathetic towards the subjects, although tainted by sadness (fado); while Spanish photography is more violent (bullfights) and is tempered by surrealist touches.
Dr. Jorge Calado
• UK and Ireland
The seven British photographers selected here – Frederick Evans, Bill Brandt, Maurice Broomfield, John Davies, Paul Seawright, Garry Fabian Miller and Sophy Rickett – offer a chronological span of works from the late 19th century to the present. What links them all is an exploration of Britain’s historical past, which can be felt in the present, where landscape, urban life and culture overlap, and in the idea and the aesthetics of ‘the sublime’.
The sublime can be defined as something awe inspiring, imposing, powerful and magnificent. When we witness something sublime, we see a state of change, feel a fearful yet thrilling lack of control, and give ourselves over to the unknown.
Ideas of the sublime were refined by British philosopher Edmund Burke. For Burke, the sublime refers to greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation. The particular combination of fear and attraction might occur when we are faced with the magnitude of nature, architecture, the city, infinite distance, intense light or darkness, and the insignificance of humans within the grand stretch of time.
Burke’s 1757 book on the topic of the sublime coincided with the beginnings of the industrial revolution in Britain, which saw traditional sublime experiences found in nature or ancient architecture replaced by those of industry and the growing metropolis. In the 20th century, Britain was also the first country to transition, often painfully, out of its primarily industrial economy. Today, we see a new kind of ‘technological sublime’, where analogue technologies (such as photography) are transitioning into the digital world to create an expanded and previously unimaginable definition of the sublime.
Martin Barnes
FESTIVAL
Dubai Photo Exhibition
18 curators bringing together works from 23 countries
From March 16th to 19th, 2016
Dubai Design District
Ras Al Khor Road
Dubai
United Arab Emirates
http://www.hipa.ae
http://www.worldphoto.org
http://www.dubaidesigndistrict.ae
