Today’s edition is dedicated to UNSEEN 2024 in Amsterdam. As every year, our correspondent John Devos organized this edition and is the author of all its content.
UNSEEN 2024 Introduction – An attempt to capture diversity (images 1-8)
‘I met my love by the gasworks wall’ is the first line of an iconic song from Dirty Old Town. Written by Ewan McColl in 1949, it has been widely performed by the Dubliners and the Pogues. If you know it, it says a lot about your age and your large taste in music. But the song also says a lot about the industrial development of the 19th century: these gasworks (mostly located in poor districts on the outskirts of cities) were essential for public and private lighting. So in Amsterdam, things were done on a grand scale: gasworks were created in the west and east of the city – they opened in 1885. For over 80 years, they ensured a constant supply of gas, until production ceased in 1967. The neo-eclectic buildings, so dear to the bourgeoisie, were abandoned and fell into disrepair.
At the start of the new millennium, the idea of converting the town’s canker appeared. Westergas is a thriving leisure and cultural centre that also hosts one of the most exciting photography fairs in the world: UNSEEN.
UNSEEN is young and international: over 70 exhibitors, around half of them from the Netherlands, the other half from Europe, but also from Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
It is a run-up to Paris Photo, with a strong programme and an emphasis on ‘young and new and unseen’. And that is what it will be: a feast with lots of photography, new photo books, lots of visitors from all over the world. For instance, the organisers signal increased interest from institutional visitors/buyers: museums and collectors looking for what is moving in the lens-based arts domain.
We will pay a lot of attention to it: today 8 contributions with more than 200 images, tomorrow we will start with the initiatives on the fringes of UNSEEN: Haute Photographie a photography fair with more than 40 photographers (again 2 contributions with more than 60 images), and on Friday we will look at the Van Gogh museum, the FOAM and Marseille photo museums, the cultural centre ‘De Brakke Grond’ and the vintage photography fair Dialogue.
On the Practical side
Venue:
Westergas Amsterdam
Klönneplein 1
Open:Preview: Thursday 19 September 14.00 – 17.00 Private, invitees only
Public opening days:
Friday 20 September 11.00 – 21.00
Saturday 21 September 11.00 – 19.00
Sunday 22 September 11.00 – 19.00
Route, Parking & Public Transport
The Westergasfabriek is a car-free environment. You can park at the Q-Park Westergasfabriek parking garage.
Public transport
The Westergasfabriek is easily accessible by public transport.
Locations
The former industrial buildings are surrounded and interspersed with green parks. Besides it’s artistic designation and green, the monumental site houses 16 special food & drink destinations.
At the end of this contribution you will find an overview list of all galleries and artists featured in these first 8 contributions
UNSEEN Galleries 1 : TOBE & Wouter van Leeuwen.
Normally, we present the galleries in an alphabetical order. To fit everything on the platform, we had to change the order. While using the opportunity to demonstrate diversity – we chose 2 different galleries, each with its own signature.TOBE of Budapest and Wouter van Leeuwen of Amsterdam
TOBE Gallery Budapest: Anna FABRICIUS, Anna GAJEWSZKY, Gergely KOVÁTS, Adam MAGYAR
Anna FABRICIUS (Hungary) 1980 (images 9-11)
The core of the art of Fabricius is based on photography, video, texts and mixed media, exploring the concept of a “group” or a “community”, their construction, how they form, and the role of an individual within it.
HOME IS WHERE WORK IS (nominated for the Meijburg Art Commission Award)
The migration of workers started taking on massive proportions from the end of the nineteenth century, a process in which Hungary is still involved as both a sender and a receiver country. Anna Fabricius has spent the last year collaborating with workers from the Far East, employed in agriculture or process manufacturing. The organizing force behind the series is ‘invisibility’. Migrant workers are invisible to the majority of society and their contribution to our common well-being, as well as hidden forms of caring for each other and their loved ones.
100 WORDS and 7 THINGS
In this project, Fabricius gives a fresh presentation of early phase of parent-son communication. Combining verbal and visual expressions, relations and gestures, meaning and understanding she explores this definitive but hard-to-depict connection.
Anna GAJEWSZKY (Hungary) 1997 (images 12-14)
Her work is mainly focused on families and womanhood. Her deep and long-standing interest in personal issues is palpable throughout her work. It comes in various forms, such as the different types of relationships humans can form with each other, with themselves, their bodies, with animals, or within a larger aspect, the land. Her photographs for the most part are staged, but they often stay on the ground of reality and playing with the duality of fiction and reality is one of the central elements of her work.
Anna Gajewszky is featured as the winner of the Main Prize at BredaPhoto Festival 2024, and she is also shortlisted for the Paris Photo Carte Blanche 2024.
IN THE SEARCH FOR VENUS
The series depicts an intimate examination of Anna’s femininity, her body, and its comparison to ancient portrayals of Venus. Anna was 18 years old when she was told by several doctors she had fertility issues, and that becoming a mother would be difficult for her.
MOTHER DONT YOU CRY
“In my family, there are loud men and strong women. Women who have held the family together, who have dealt with the difficulties of everyday life while men were out, working, drinking, and exploring. In my series Mother Don’t You Cry I go on a journey of understanding the past I come from, the lives that were lived before me, and the struggles and happiness that all formed the person I am today.”
Gergely KOVÁTS (Hungary) 1985 (images 15-17)
Kováts works on long-term projects springing from personal experience, blurring the lines between fiction and non-fiction, revealing the in-between domain of the ambiguous.
His works have been exhibited several times in Budapest. Gergely Kováts is shortlisted for the Paris Photo Carte Blanche 2024.
ANOTHER WORLD
We used to dream of utopia, but now we dream of escape. It took a torturous and disappointing 100 years to put our political imagination to sleep, but we woke up from the fever dream of the 20th century to a new, scarier nightmare. Is it a wonder we’re driven further and further away from this reality into worlds of words, celluloid and software? It seems all in vain though, when fantasy and the real world merge in the self-fulfilling prophecies of our dystopias.
Another World is about the loss of the political utopia: the series posits that we created thousands of imaginary worlds because we lost our belief in being able to change this one. It explores the reasons why utopia wanders from the pages of political pamphlets to the pages of radical science fiction books.
Adam MAGYAR (Hungary/ Germany/US) 1972 (images 18-19)
Adam Magyar is a lens-based artist captivated by time. His process is a symbiosis between technology and creative instinct. He is fascinated by the flow and the endless stream of lives in the world’s biggest mega-cities.
Magyar is attracted by high-tech cities and urban life. He depicts the synergies of city life while embracing it as home to both people and technology. With each of his series, he observes the flow of time, scrutinizing the transience of life and humans’ inherent urge to leave some trace behind. Magyar is keen on adopting and reinventing contemporary devices like industrial machine-vision cameras to produce his unique view of the human experience. Magyar stated, “I study our relationship to past, future, and present moments, reflecting upon how we use and misuse time.”
TOBE Gallery
1088 Budapest
www.tobegallery.hu
Wouter van Leeuwen Amsterdam : Bryan Schutmaat, Jeroen Hofman, Thomas Manneke
Bryan Schutmaat (US) 1983 (images 20-21)
“Sons of the Living” is a body of work about the land and people along highways in the deserts of the American West. It includes intimate portraits of travelers—mostly hitchhikers and drifters who dwell along the interstate system—as well as landscapes and still life photos that reflect a country in peril. Amidst the backdrop of environmental decline, economic dispossession, and societal neglect, this work depicts the human capacity for endurance. At our critical moment in history, as we witness but fail to understand the frailty of our ecology, economy, and social stability, “Sons of the Living” creates an atmospheric narrative that foreshadows the risks of our society’s current path. The work both honors yet subverts the American photographic roadtrip tradition with an updated view of the 21st century’s “open road” that addresses a new era of anxiety.
Jeroen Hofman (The Netherlands) 1976 Zeeland (images 22-24)
“Zeeland” is a popular holiday destination in general. People from various nationalities gather here, at the edge of the North Sea. The coastline still shows so-called natural traces within the cultural landscape, meaning that this land was shaped by two forces, nature and humankind.
This is a multifaceted landscape: harsh, raw, fine, empty, and seemingly endless. This region, which Jeroen Hofman visually describes, represents a bridge between the past and the current era. Its history is reflected in the waves breaking on the sand of its vast beaches. The flat strips of open land reaching all the way to the horizon set a very particular scene for the northern light. A characteristic light depicted perfectly by the 17th century Dutch painters. The current face of the same landscape is marked by ingenious solutions of creative and motivated individuals defying the seasons and the tides to demand compensation from the soil for what the sea has always and continues to reclaim.
The constant confrontation of these opposing forces is barely visible in the visual harmony of the panoramas. All tension and divergences seem to fade under the colourful spectacle of grey clouds and wide blue skies. But a strong impression remains, a light saltiness of the tongue, caused by the wind coming from the north.
The publication Jeroen Hofman – Zeeland is published by Hannibal, and signed at the Book Fair Friday 20/9 at 5pm + Sunday 22/9 at 2pm
Thomas Manneke (The Netherlands) 1970 (images 25-28)
With Zillion, Thomas Manneke proves that you don’t need to embark on a journey for poetic images. All photographs were taken in and around his Amsterdam studio. In front of his large format camera, the shadow of the late afternoon sun transforms an old coat rack with balls into a galaxy. A houseplant, a large rubber ear or the lid of a box: look closely at something mundane and you will see that the possibilities are endless and beauty is everywhere.
Wouter van Leeuwen Galerie
1016 SP Amsterdam The Netherlands
www.woutervanleeuwen.com
In our contributions we will be talking about following Galleries & their artists.
Galleries
Albumen Gallery contribution 2
ANNET GELINK GALLERY contribution 2
Art Gallery o68 contribution 2
Bildhalle Amsterdam Zurich (Stand 34): (Contribution 3)
BUCHKUNST BERLIN Gallery Berlin Stand 41 (Contribution 3):
Contour Gallery Rotterdam: (Contribution 3)
Depth of Field – Amsterdam: (Contribution 3)
Einspach & Czapolai Fine Art & Photography Budapest (Contribution 3):
FLAT//LAND Amsterdam (Contribution 3)
FOG Gallery Bratislava Galeries 4
Galerie Caroline O’Breen Galeries 4
Galerie Helder Den Haag Galeries 4
Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam Contribution 5
Galerie Wilms, Venlo: Contribution 5
Gallery JAPANESQUE Paris (Contribution 3):
Gallery Untitled Rotterdam Galeries 4
Lab 1930. Fotografia contemporanea Milano
MAXUS101 Copenhague : Galeries 4
MPV Gallery Oisterwijk The Netherlands, Contribution 6
Open Doors Gallery London Contribution 6
ROOF-A Rotterdam: Contribution 5
Shoobil Gallery Antwerpen Contribution 6
SmithDavidson Gallery Amsterdam Contribution 6
STIEGLITZ19 Antwerpen & Brussel Contribution 6
The Merchant House Amsterdam Contribution 7
THIS IS NO FANTASY Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Contribution 7
THK Gallery Cape Town: Contribution 7
TOBE Gallery Budapest: Contribution 1
Urbanek London Contribution 7
VF Art Projects (Spain & Luxembourg) Contribution 7
Window Fourteen Gallery Genèva, Switserland Contribution 8
VisionQuesT 4rosso Genova Italy Contribution 8
Wouter van Leeuwen Amsterdam Contribution 1
Artists
Daniel Arsham, Contribution 5
Atong Atem Contribution 8 Unbound
Hugo Aveta Contribution 7
Janette Beckman Contribution 6
Pietro Bologna Contribution 6
Kim Boske (Contribution 3)
Nicola Brandt, Contribution 7
Adolphe Braun (Contribution 3) ,
Crisitan Bravo Contribution 8
Alessandra Calò Contribution 6
Robert Conrad contribution 2
Marco Craig Contribution 8
Ellen Dahl Contribution 7
misha de ridder Galeries 4
Tamas Dezsö (Contribution 3)
Brooke DiDonato Contribution 5
Tony Dočekal contribution 2
Tanja Engelberts Galeries 4,
Giuseppe Enrie (Contribution 3),
Anna FABRICIUS Contribution 1
Anna GAJEWSZKY Contribution 1
Andrés Gallego Galeries 4
Francesca Galliani Contribution 8
René Geritsen (Contribution 3),
Quintus Glerum Contribution 8 Unbound
Dionisio Gonzales Contribution 7
Emile Gostelie (Contribution 3),
Laurent Goumarre Contribution 8
Svante Gullichsen Galeries 4
Javier Hirschfeld Moreno Contribution 6
Jeroen Hofman Contribution 1
Lisanne Hoogerwerf Contribution 5
Leila Jeffreys (Contribution 3)
Johnny Jensen Galeries 4
Suzanne Jongmans Contribution 5
Thomas Kemnitz contribution 2
Yasuo Kiyonaga (Contribution 3)
Michiel Kluiters Contribution 6
Sjoerd Knibbeler Contribution 5
Ara Ko Contribution 8
Gert Jan Kocken (Contribution 3)
Charlotte Koenen contribution 2
Gergely KOVÁTS Contribution 1
Lynne Leegte Contribution 8 Unbound
Adam MAGYAR Contribution 1 & Contribution 8 Unbound
Thomas Manneke Contribution 1
Amanda Means Contribution 7
Johnny Miller (Contribution 3)
Lara Micheli Contribution 8
Faryda Moumouh Contribution 6
Robby Müller contribution 2
Erwin Olaf Contribution 5
Terry O’Neill
Tjitske Oosterholt (Contribution 3)
Lenny Oosterwijk Galeries 4
Kevin Osepa
Dita Pepe Galeries 4
Jan Pypers (Contribution 3),
Mounir Raji Galeries 4
Steven Seidenberg contribution 2
Eliška Sky Galeries 4
Louise te Poele contribution 2
Albert Renger-Patzsch (Contribution 3),
Barry Salzman, Contribution 7
Bryan Schutmaat, Contribution 1
Trevor Stuurman Contribution 7
Marjan Teeuwen Contribution 5
Marie Cecile Thijs Contribution 6
Miroslav Tichy Contribution 6
Maciej Urbanek Contribution 7 & Contribution 8 Unbound
Hans van Asch Galeries 4
Ed van der Elsken contribution 2
Julie van der Vaart Contribution 5
Vincent van Gaalen Galeries 4
Bertien van Manen contribution 2
Joost Vandeburg (Contribution 3 & Contribution 8 Unbound
Shen Wei Contribution 5
Vincent Zanni Contribution 5
Daan Zuijderwijk Contribution 5
