Unseen Jubilee edition 16th-18th September 2022, Westergas Amsterdam (images 1-3)
From 16 to 18 September, the 10th international photography fair Unseen will take place in Amsterdam. For this special anniversary edition, 70 galleries, 65 publishers and 12 special projects will descend on the Westergasfabriek grounds in Amsterdam. Ever since its first edition in 2012, Unseen has occupied a special place in the world of international photography. The fair is known worldwide for its intimate atmosphere, its high quality and its good name in the circle of the international photography world. From 16 to 18 September, it will once again transform Amsterdam into the epicentre of photography, for the 10th time.
Westergas is an art and culture village where historical values and innovative ideas come together. With its idiosyncratic yet typically Amsterdam character, this unique monumental location in the Westerpark surprises its visitors time and again.
About these contributions – originally planned for 3 days, then reduced to 1 day by the editor at the last minute… We present a total of 65 galleries, UNSEEN, UNBOUND and the book fair. On the other hand, some entries arrived late or only contain a few references to links from which you are supposed to distil the information. With these contributions we want to give a platform to photographers, initiators, galleries – for free, but don’t use us as unpaid staff.
These contributions give an impression of a very rich, diverse, international and interesting fair. Are we complete? No, thankfully not, because otherwise there would be many more contributions… we just hope this will motivate you to visit the fair!
NFT
The addition of NFTs is new to Unseen’s offering. After many discussions with various parties, Unseen will enter into partnership with the international NFT platform for art photography Unveil this edition and the coming year.
UNBOUND
Last year Unseen launched the independent and ambitious section Unbound, dedicated to researching the boundaries of the photographic universe. Unbound was well received and qualified as unprecedentedly innovative, particularly by insiders. Unseen found Damarice Amao of the Centre Pompidou willing to join Unbound as guest curator for the upcoming anniversary edition.
BOOK MARKET
Sixty-seven independent (inter)national publishers of art and photography books participate in this popular section of Unseen. After last year’s restrictions, there will again be room for special book launches and signing sessions. For example, there is the world premiere of Anton Corbijn’s latest book at Hannibal Books with a signing by the master photographer. A milestone is the launch of a new Book Award in cooperation with GOST Books, London’s famous boutique publisher of photography books. From a total of 353 entries from 40 countries – unpublished projects by photographers – a professional jury will choose a winner whose project will be designed and published as a book by GOST.
Unseen Amsterdam
The participants of 2022 can be found at: Unseenamsterdam.com/participants
Details of the complete program: Unseenamsterdam.com/fair
Online catalogue at https://galleryviewer.com/en/event/21/home/galleries
Venue: Westergas | Klönneplein | 1014 DB | Amsterdam
Friday September 16 from 11.00 am – 9 pm
Saturday September 17 from 11.00 am- 7 pm
Sunday September 18 from 11.00 am- 7 pm
Tickets
Online day ticket: € 19,50 p.p.
Tickets can only be booked online in advance and are valid on a regular exhibition day of your choice. Available through: Unseenamsterdam.com/#tickets
John Devos
johndevos.photo ad gmail.com
AG Galerie: Peyman Hooshmandzadeh, Ali Zanjani (1986), Parisa Aminolahi (1978) – (Images 4- 5)
Peyman Hooshmandzadeh (1969) works as a photojournalist for several newspapers in Iran and abroad (Reuters, Panos Picture Agency, Polfoto Agency). and is one of the founding members of 135 PHOTOS agency in Iran. At Unseen he brings “I Try to Become Left-handed, 2020”
During the Covid-19 lockdown in Iran, Peyman Hooshmandzadeh stayed at home along with tens of millions of Iranians. Iran was one of the hardest hit countries with the Covid pandemic. In an effort to remain sane and calm during one of the most unprecedented events of our lives, This series was created once with the left hand and once with the right.
Ali Zanjani (1986) is a Tehran-based artist who creates work using film frames from cinematic, educational and news archives formerly owned by the pre-Revolution National Iranian Broadcasting Company. By selecting specific frames and removing them from their original context, Zanjani re-censors images making them permissible in an increasingly censored society.
This series of photographs comes from an archive of ID photos taken in Kia Studio in Tehran, Iran. This series of nine photographs, reveals the reluctance of these soldiers to cut their hair and the photographer’s technique to conceal and edit the images using a red marker directly over the negatives.
Parisa Aminolahi (1978) – Tehran Diary is a project on my mother’s life in Tehran, and while visiting her three children living abroad. My mother belongs to a generation of middle class Iranian parents living alone, and often continents apart from their children. The current project started in 2012, during one of my regular trips from the Netherlands to my homeland, Tehran, Iran. I started taking pictures of my mother’s daily life, and this became our routine. Afterwards I started adding to the images – result is a hybrid of photography and painting, giving a surreal sense to the imagery, which was as peculiar as my mother’s life.” After this series was completed, late in the winter of 2022, my mother was involved in a tragic car accident in Tehran which took her life. I was left in shock and to suffer the agony of this unexpected loss. I have not been functioning properly since. Tehran Diary, the book, is a tribute to her— her life, her love and her memory.
Ag Galerie
Tehran, Iran
+98 21 26851832
[email protected]
www.aggalerie.com
AKINCI: melanie bonajo (images 6-7)
AKINCI is proud to present at UNSEEN 2022 photographic works by melanie bonajo. We especially are excited to present a.o. works of their newest project When the body says Yes, now being presented as film and installation at the Dutch Pavilion, Venice Biennale which for this occasion finds place at Chiesetta della Misericordia in Cannaregio, Venice instead of the Giardini, and can be viewed until November 27, 2022.
melanie bonajo (they/them/theirs) is an artist, filmmaker, somatic sex coach and educator, cuddle workshop facilitator and activist. Through their videos, performances, photographs, and installations, they examine current conundrums of co-existence in a crippling capitalist system, and address themes of eroding intimacy and isolation in an increasingly sterile, technological world. They research how technological advances and commodity-based pleasures increase feelings of alienation, removing an individual’s sense of belonging. Their works present anti-capitalist methods to reconnect and to explore sexualities, intimacies and feelings. bonajo’s experimental documentaries often feature communities living or working on the margins of society, either through illegal means or cultural exclusion, and the paradoxes inherent to ideas of comfort with a strong sense for community, equality and body-politics. Their most recent work however is When the body says Yes (2022) which right now is the Dutch entry at the Venice Biennale and is part of the artist’s ongoing research into the current status of intimacy in our increasingly alienating, commodity-driven world. For bonajo, touch can be a powerful remedy for the modern epidemic of loneliness.
AKINCI
1017 WZ Amsterdam – The Netherlands
+31 (0)20 63 80 4 80
[email protected]
www.akinci.nl
Albumen Gallery: Ania Freindorf, William Stewart, Robert John Watson, Edmund Sumner (images 8-9)
Water – this essential precious resource – is the theme running through Albumen Gallery’s Unseen exhibition concept – water in various states and different environments.
We’re bringing four photographers from different parts of the world together, who each in their own way explore the power of water shaping the environment.
The works of the four photographers share an interest in exploring abstract textures in landscape and nature photography. However the aesthetic quality of the images is coupled with a bittersweet element reminding us of the fragile – endangered – equilibrium of the world’s biosphere.
Polish photographer Ania Freindorf’s ongoing project ‘Naked Glaciers’ will eventually cover seven continents. Throughout the project Ania Freindorf aims to convey a sense of power of glacier formations coupled with today’s fragility and exposure of these ice structures to climate change.
Australian photographer William Stewart’s Greenland work also reflects on the climate related threat to the environment. But his photos of Greenland icebergs also contain a historical dimension.
British Photographer Robert John Watson’s seascapes are beautiful minimalist compositions. Verging on the abstract, they are studies of the sea at different times of the day and in varying light conditions. The viewers are invited to immerse themselves in them. There is something calming in losing yourself in their endlessness – calming and alarming. The omnipresence of water in Robert John Watson’s images also suggests a world drowned by climate induced rising ocean levels.
The acclaimed British architecture photographer Edmund Sumner magically captures the underground water and the unique character and atmosphere of the Arcari caves. Located in the hills close to the city of Vicenza, the Cavea Arcari was the quarry that provided the precious Pietra Bianca di Vicenza that was used to build, among other buildings, the famous villas of Andrea Palladio.
Albumen Gallery
London, UK
+ 44 20 7229 6022
[email protected]
www.albumen-gallery.com
ARCHIRAAR GALLERY : Pierre Liebaert & Roman Moriceau (images 10-11)
“During Unseen 2022, Archiraar will display a duo show of Belgian photographer Pierre Liebaert (b. 1989) and French artist Roman Moriceau (b. 1976).
The series “I believe in Nights” by Pierre Liebaert explores the ritual activity that is part of man’s relationship to the rhythm of the seasons, to the lunar cycle, that of repetition rather than to history, with the constraints of cold and heat, to harvest and community spirit, to sexuality and mortality.
For his part, Roman Moriceau plays with appearances, works on the materiality of objects. He helps us to contemplate nature in its fragile and ephemeral condition, making it poetic and precious. ”
ARCHIRAAR GALLERY
1050 – Brussels
+32 479 58 46 60
[email protected]
www.archiraar.com
Bildhalle: Bastiaan Woudt (1987), Paul Cupido (1972), Douglas Mandry (1989), Margaret Lansink (1961) & Simone Kappeler (1989) (images 12-13)
Margaret Lansink, new in our program, transcends time and age in her latest series “Friction” by juxtaposing photographs of professional ballet dancers, compelled to retire at the age of 35, with the raw landscape of Death Valley in California. She encourages us to follow the flow of an ever-changing world that takes shape through her conviction that beauty is to be found in change: the beauty of rekindling our thoughts, our ideas, our (human) connections, our society, our bond with nature and most importantly our ‘selves’.
Bastiaan Woudt has enjoyed a meteoric rise to success in the world of contemporary photography. He has a strong preference for time-honoured genres, such as portraiture and nudes. His work shows references to illustrious periods of photography, to Surrealism, for example, but also to the fashion photography and photojournalism of the 1960s and ‘70s.
Paul Cupido unites solid materiality with ephemeral immateriality in works that invoke the sublime. He addresses not only the vulnerability and inevitable transience of life but above all its strength, power and wholeness, so much so that his pictures never seem sad, for they are informed with the beauty and richness of life.
Douglas Mandry’s experimental photography of coral reefs and 3D replicas of corals address such questions as political boundaries and the shift of natural resources as a consequence of globalization. Every year, dozens of illegally uprooted coral specimens are confiscated at Swiss airports and prevented from crossing the border. These are the starting point of Mandry’s works, premiered at Unseen.
Simone Kappeler is one of the most important Swiss photo artists of her generation. For more than forty years, she has uncovered moments of magic on her journeys or short forays into the nearby landscape. Working largely with an analogue camera, she lends everyday objects and scenes a striking majesty through the incidence of light, perspective and colour.
Bildhalle
1071 HR Amsterdam & 1016 SM Amsterdam The Netherlands
+31 20 808 88 05 & +31 20 241 47 48
[email protected]
www.bildhalle.nl
bitforms gallery: Quayola (images 14-15)
bitforms gallery presents Pointillisme, a new body of work by Italian artist Quayola. Constructing immersive installations, often at historically significant architectural sites, the artist reimagines canonical imagery through contemporary technology: Quayola employs technology to explore the tensions and equilibriums between the real and artificial, the figurative and abstract, the old and new.
Pointillisme continues the artist’s ongoing exploration of high-precision laser scanning systems and their inherited imperfections. Drawing a parallel between historical pictorial traditions and computational aesthetics, this project speculates as to new landscape paintings and video created by machines. While reproducing similar conditions to those favored by ‘en plein air’ painters of the late 19th century, natural landscapes are expressed through video compositions and a series of inkjet prints.
Similarly, inkjet prints from the artist’s Storms focuses on the pictorial substance of plein air studies with tools of advanced technologies. The action, color, and choreography of Quayola’s Storms are generated by data sourced from ultra-high-definition footage of stormy seas in Cornwall, England. Quayola uses algorithms to provoke the sea as if viewed for the first time; foreign, yet familiar. Each seascape blends mnemonic, historical, and retinal knowledge to comprise a printed painting made up of pixels.
Storms debuted at the gallery’s New York space in November 2021. The series is intended as an exhibition of unfinished artworks that paint themselves over time. Although each video contains pictorial forms that crumble towards abstraction, the works maintain their connection with data as a driving force.bitforms gallery
New York, NY 10002
(212) 366-6939
info(at)bitforms.art
www.bitforms.art
