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The Week in Germany: Culture

April 27, 2007

Photography Roundup - Roman Vishniac's Berlin and Wolfgang Tillmans Retrospective on Show in Washington

Roman Vishniac (1897-1990) is famous for his images of Jewish life in Eastern Europe taken on the eve of World War II. His Berlin photographs remained in contrast completely unknown and were only discovered following his death.

Taken throughout his residency the city between 1920 and 1939, they portray family and friends, everyday street scenes and Berlin characters, as well as Jewish life in the late 1930s. Donated to the Jewish Museum Berlin by his daughter Mara Vishniac Kohn, a selection of these photographs is now on show for the first time in the United States at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington.

The opening reception for this rare exhibition is on May 3 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at the Sixth & I Historic Synagoge at 600 I Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001, phone: 202-408-3100.

Viewing hours are Monday to Thursday, from 12 to 3 pm on the first and third Sunday of each month, as well as by appointement.

Links:

Jewish Museum Berlin

Sixth and I Historic Synagogue

Goethe Institut Washington

Wolfgang Tillmans at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Wolfgang Tillmans is internationally recognized for his photography that captures often overlooked subjects and moments in everyday life. A first major solo exhibition of this artist in the United States will be on show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington from May 10 to August 12.

Tillman's work concentrates on deceptively casual views of friends and acquaintances caught at their most unguardedly "human" moments. He presents his photographs in highly distinctive installations, in which variously sized photographs are affixed to the walls in deliberate (yet seemingly random) arrangements, in order to create a variety of physical and emotional relationships witih the viewer based on placement and scale.

The 38-year-old German photographer's work challenges established photographic conventions by combining a sense of immediacy with carefully considered compositions to produce intimate and visually dynamic reflections of contemporary life. He rejects traditional hierarchy in subject matter with distinctive installations created specifically for each presentation.

Wolfgang Tillmans's Arkadia I, 1996. Photo: Hirshhorn Museum, Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, and Regan Projects, Los Angeles.

As Hirshhorn Deputy Director and Chief Curator Kerry Brougher puts it:

“Wolfgang Tillmans is widely recognized for having reshaped the practice and display of photography. He is concerned about opening up new possibilities for photography, continuing in a direction that was first explored in the early 1960s, when artists such as Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke blurred the line between photography and painting, while others like John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Dan Graham and Richard Prince used snapshots or appropriated existing photographs to create conceptual art pieces. Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall continued in that mode by confusing the boundaries between photography and cinema."

Tillmans' presentation at the Hirshhorn features installations consisting of some 300 photographs drawn from his entire career. The exhibition is co-organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center in Los Angeles, where it was also on show last year.

Links:

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

More about Wolfgang Tillmans

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