Forma will open two important exhibitions during next year. Both of them are Forma productions and will then travel to other countries.
A first European retrospective of Gordon Parks in collaboration with the Gordon Parks Foundation and another curated by Alessandra Mauro and Francesco Zanot called “Camera in Revolt” will address the subject of pop art and photography, namely the use of photography by pop artists, from Andy Warhol to his more photographic epigones like Steven Shore and Eggleston.
Gordon Parks. An American Story.
The show Gordon Parks. An American story will open at Forma, in Spring 2013 and will be available for European tour starting Fall 2013. Curated by Alessandra Mauro, Artistic Director of Forma, the exhibition is a production of the Gordon Parks Foundation, New York, and Forma Foundation for Photography, Milan.
Il will be a great retrospective exhibition of 160 pictures to present the art and the work of Gordon Parks over 30 years of photography. In Fact he left behind a body of work that documents many of the most important aspects of American culture from the early 1940s up until his death in 2006, with a focus on race relations, poverty, Civil Rights, and urban life.
In 1948 his acclaimed photo essay on the life of a Harlem gang leader gave him a position as the first African American staff photographer and writer for Life Magazine . Parks remains at LIFE Magazine for two decades. He was also a composer and author, and in 1969, became the first African American to write and direct a Hollywood feature film based on his novel The Learning Tree, followed in 1971 by the enormously successful motion picture Shaft.
From over 25 reportages – most of them realized for LIFE magazine – the show will display the extraordinary Parks photo essays as real “photographic storyboards” that in meaningful sequences depict vivid social issues, reflect the struggle for justice of Black Americans, describe European cities and American villages, he was also a celebrated composer, author, and filmmaker who interacted with many of the most prominent people of his era . He portrayed personalities like Muhammed Ali, Malcom X, Duke Ellington or Ingrid Bergman.
The selection has been made combining both vintage (coming from the Gordon Parks Foundation) and modern prints of different size. The exhibition will also show trailers from the most relevant motion Pictures directed by Gordon Parks, as Learning Tree and Shaft and original LIFE issues with the most imortant Parks publications.
The exhibition will also feature a catalogue published by Contrasto and will be accompanied by extensive publication (5 volumes) that will be released by Steidl this Fall 2012.
CAMERA IN REVOLT
Photography and the American Pop Art
The exhibition Camera in revolt, curated by Alessandra Mauro and Francesco Zanot, is a production of Forma Foundation for Photography, Milan and will be presentend at FORMA in 2013. Camera in revolt investigates for the first time in a museum show the role of photography in the American Pop Art movement. Photography, which is a medium strongly related to advertising and the democratic visual language par excellence, had a great influence on the work of many Pop artists, even if none of them ever started a wholly distinct reasearch using it. Photography has been an essential starting point for fundamental works such as Andy Warhol’s silkscreens and Lucas Samaras’ boxes, as well as a tool available to the same artists for a production that’s often quick and spontaneous. Focusing on these practices, Camera in revolt explores different kinds of connections between photography and Pop Art, establishing once and for all the central role of this medium for the conceptual and aesthetic definition of this extraordinary cultural movement.
The exhibition comprehends three separate sections, AMERICAN POP – LANDMARKS, EGGLESTON / SHORE – STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHERS and FAMILY ALBUM.
The first section explores the relationship between photography and the artists associated to the original group of the American Pop Art. The second section of the show is devoted to the works of William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, both straight photographers who had some important connections with the Pop world. The last section of Camera in revolt displays a series of photographs taken by Ugo Mulas of different Pop artists during his trips to the US between 1964 and 1967.
Camera in revolt is made possible with the cooperation of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Getty Musum, Los Angeles; Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Archivio Ugo Mulas, Milano.
