FOAM MAGAZINE #21 / MERGE
A striking characteristic of the way many young artists work today is
that they are far less attached to one single discipline than artists in
the past. There are visual artists who make use of all sorts of media to
express themselves, depending totally on the content to be expressed.
This sometimes takes place within a specific oeuvre; sometimes different
media are even used within one specific artwork. Photography is
also being made use of by visual artists who do not define themselves
as photographers. Concurrently, there are also photographers who are
conscious of a photographic tradition and who feel at home within that
tradition, but who likewise do not hesitate to undergo cross-fertilization
with other media. Much of this work expresses a gratifying nonconformity,
sometimes even a somewhat anarchistic air, by which the
content dictates the form. Such a close relationship between photography
and other media often leads to new, unexpected manifestations,
which shine a new light on the nature and substance of the medium and
places known certainties under discussion. This bond of photography
with other media is the focal point of this issue of Foam Magazine.
We have succeeded in putting together eight portfolios in which photography
relates to another medium in a surprising, and hopefully also
inspiring way. Penelope Umbrico uses the Internet as a fertile source for
her images. Her series Broken Sets (eBay) consists of bordered shots of
broken LCD screens which were offered for sale on eBay. The abstract
and intriguing patterns on the screens recall modernist paintings. By
collecting image material from Internet, processing it and placing it
in a new context, Umbrico redefines the problem of authorship. Completely
different is the work of Swedish artist Gunnel W娬strand. With
great care and precision, she makes large format paintings from photos
which give an impression of her fathers early youth. The result of
this time-consuming and concentrated way of working exhibits a fascinating
tension between technical reproduction and handwork, and
inspires questions about the nature of representation and perception.
At the foundation of the newest series by Adam Broomberg and Oliver
Chanarin is a well-known 1979 photo of an execution in Iran during the
Islamist Revolution. Broomberg and Chanarin use never-before-shown
image material of this execution and turn the documentary into an
autonomous work on the complexity of historical events, the ambiguity
of the reality and the influence of icons on our collective memory.
In his series Scales, made in cooperation with the Canadian Centre for
Architecture in Montreal, Hatakeyama worked with a large number of
architectural models and created work that focuses on the tension
between architectural and photographic space. How different are the
Polaroids that Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky made in both Italy
and Russia. The photos express longing, nostalgia and melancholy, but
are at the same time a study for his film Nostalghia. David Claerbout
makes films as well, with photographic material sometimes at their
basis. In his work, Claerbout investigates the intriguing relationship
between both media and focuses on the complex nature of our perception
of time. The Dutch duo Freudenthal / Verhagen have worked with a
large number of fashion designers and produced very diverse work. In
the work shown here, they explore the borders between fashion photography,
art, sculpture and good taste. Finally, Nickel van Duijvenboden
is responsible for the portfolio that may push the limits of photography
to its very edge: a portfolio without images, consisting solely of text.
Loyal readers of Foam Magazine will already have understood that
this issue consists of eight instead of the usual six portfolios. Starting
with this issue, each Foam Magazine will now include this number of
portfolios: more image material, more content and more unexpected
connections. What remains the same are our regular features such as
On My Mind, the interview with a prominent person from the world of
photography in this case Fred Ritchin, director of Pixel Press and
our books section.