London: Martin Parr "Only Human"

Where: National Portrait Gallery

When: March 7 - May 27, 2019

This major new exhibition brings together works by one of Britain’s best-known and most widely celebrated photographers, Martin Parr. Including recognisable photographs alongside works never before exhibited it will focus on one of his most engaging subjects – people.

The exhibition will include portraits of people from around the world, with a special focus on Parr’s wry observations of Britishness, explored through a series of projects that investigate British identity today.

Find out more: HERE

Québec: Valérian Mazataud Grand Nord

Exhibition presented as part of festival Art Souterrain 2019.
February 28th – Avril 6th 2019

Opening Reception: February 28th, 5:30pm

Project description

Valérian Mazataud is a journalist, photographer and artist deeply invested in exploring new strategies to engage the viewer in this age of media. Since July 2018, he has been working on Grand Nord, a project based on photography workshops offered to residents of Montréal-Nord.

During these workshops, retirees, adults and teenagers invited to revisit photo archives from their neighborhood discovered a rich image-based popular history: from community celebrations to romantic trysts; from turnip fields to shopping centres; from the village of Sainte-Gertrude in the 1940s to refugees from the Haitian earthquake of 2010. Through their aesthetic choices, research, role-playing, and collaborative work with the artist, workshop participants recreated these scenes to produce new images based on their own local history.

Mazataud’s work embodies a reflection on documentary approaches in photography, and the relative nature of their objectivity. Having been struck by the strength of the social bond in Montréal-Nord, he committed himself to a collaborative process with members of the community. At Skol, he is presenting the photo series and sound recordings that emerged from these workshops.


More information: HERE

Amsterdam, NL: Santu Mofokeng Stories

February 15 - April 28, 2019
foam Fotografiemuseum
Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam
pressoffice@foam.org
www.foam.org

This year marks the 25th anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic elections, and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.

From the Series Train Church. Photograph by Santu Mofokeng (b.1956) © Santu Mofokeng Foundation. Image courtesy of Lunetta Bartz, MAKER, Johannesburg and Steidl GmbH.

South African photographer Santu Mofokeng (b. 1956) famously documented daily life during and after apartheid. Foam presents a large-scale retrospective, containing a selection of his most important visual essays and featuring many unpublished works from the artist’s private archives.

The exhibition Santu Mofokeng – Stories brings together a number of important photographic essays by Mofokeng made in his native South Africa. Amongst the series on show is his first and most celebrated visual essay Train Church (1986), portraying the spontaneous religious rituals that occurred on the Soweto-Johannesburg commuter train. Other (many yet unknown) images portray life in the townships of Soweto and Dukathole; political protests leading up to the abolition of apartheid, and the historic election of Nelson Mandela as president in 1994. Together, the series narrates how the rapidly changing political climate in South Africa affected daily life across the country. Raised in the township of Soweto, Mofokeng photographed South African communities from the inside, painting a nuanced and dynamic portrait of a complex society in transition.

More information: HERE
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Amsterdam NL: Erwin Blumenfeld in Color

From 15 February, Foam will be showing the colour photography of the influential German photographer Erwin Blumenfeld.

Pat Blake for Vogue NY, 1954 © The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld

Blumenfeld (1897-1969) was born in Germany. He mastered photography in the Netherlands, where he shot portraits. After he went to Paris he built a career in fashion photography for a few years and he only worked in black and white. He liked to experiment with various techniques such as double exposure, distortion and solarisation. But from the moment that colour photography was introduced to the world, he transformed his original compositions in black and white into colour.

His special repertoire of shapes and colours that he developed after he left for the United States in 1941 made him one of the most original fashion photographers in New York. The female body and death were his main sources of inspiration. Despite the fashionable frivolity, he distinguished himself by the surreal nature of his subjects; the goal of his search was not realism, but the mystery of reality. He worked freelance for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Life and Vogue. The exhibition of his work in Foam focuses on colour photography that he developed in his period in New York (1941-1960) and gave him worldwide recognition.

The exhibition will be opened by granddaughter Nadia Blumenfeld-Charbit on 14 February 2019. You are welcome from 5.30pm onwards.

More information: HERE
Find out more about exhibitions on All About Photo

"Rage for color", Look, October 15th, 1958.
(models from the left to right : Renée Breton, Tess Mall, Dolores Hawkins, Anne St. Marie, Bani Yelverton)
© The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld

UK: Tate Britain presents a comprehensive retrospective of the legendary British photographer Don McCullin

5 February – 6 May 2019
Tate Britain
Millbank
London SW1P 4RG

This exhibition showcases some of the most impactful photographs captured over the last 60 years. It includes many of his iconic war photographs – including images from Vietnam, Northern Ireland and more recently Syria. But it also focuses on the work he did at home in England, recording scenes of poverty and working class life in London’s East End and the industrial north, as well as meditative landscapes of his beloved Somerset, where he lives.​

Sir Don McCullin was born in 1935 and grew up in a deprived area of north London. He got his first break when a newspaper published his photograph of friends who were in a local gang. From the 1960s he forged a career as probably the UK’s foremost war photographer, primarily working for the Sunday Times Magazine. His unforgettable and sometimes harrowing images are accompanied in the show with his brutally honest commentaries.

With over 250 photographs, all printed by McCullin himself in his own darkroom, this exhibition will be a unique opportunity to appreciate the scope and achievements of his entire career.

The Guvners in their Sunday Suits, Finsbury Park, London, 1958 © Don McCullin

Shell-shocked US Marine, The Battle of Hue, 1968 © Don McCullin

Italy: Giorgio Di Maio in Florence

Giorgio Di Maio exibit his work Correspondences in Florence, Onart Gallery, Via della Pergola 61, from the 9 at 18 February in a Collective of Contemporary Photography entitled "La Materia dei sensi" ( "The Matter of senses") dedicated at sensuality, at sensual fascination that emanate from not only the body but the inanimate things.

The modern poetry began with the Charles Baudelaire’s lyrics Correspondances, mystical vision where the Nature is capital. The bloody poet, who loves pleasures and excessis, entrusts his lyrics not the objective description of the reality but a function to know the true essence of things. Giorgio Di Maio, researcher of Hidden Harmony, find the correspondences between the colors and the geometries in the reality and the soul of observer.

 

Hong Kong: The Art of Photography by Yoichiro Nishimura

Fabrik Gallery is delighted to present “Yoichiro Nishimura – The Art of Photography” an exhibition that showcases acclaimed Japanese artist Yoichiro Nishimura’s (b.1967) photography from his two significant works “Life” and “Blue Flower” series. The exhibition runs from March 7 to April 11, 2019. Collectors and art enthusiasts are invited to join the opening night on Thursday, March 7 from 6.30pm to 8pm.

After studying Photography in the Bigakko School of Arts, Yoichiro Nishimura expressed an interest in taking photographs of his surroundings and with the influence of the two admired Japanese photographers Takuma Nakahira and Daido Moriyama, it has since then, become the focal point of his lenses. For the Hong Kong debut of “Yoichiro Nishimura – The Art of Photography”, the artist has carefully curated a selection of photographs from his two catalogue raisonné – “Life” and “Blue Flower” published in 1999 and 2016, respectively.

In his “Life” series, artist Yoichiro Nishimura has done years of experiment, capturing the beauty of his own ‘Ikebana’: the Japanese art of flower arrangement. The format which the artist employs expresses the flowers’ elegance, one of the two translations in Japanese Kanji characters for the word flower (華). On a dark setting, the flowers are photographed under natural light using a Hasselblad camera, a snapshot where his emotions and values resonate describing the balance between life and death, light and dark, and the Chinese principle of yin and yang. For Nishimura, the latest technology is secondary, it is only the artistic expression of his own inspiration.

Nishimura’s award-winning “Blue Flower” series is an eight-year abstract of his daily encounters. With a career spanning over three decades, Nishimura invented a new photographic technique called ‘Scangram’. Inspired by Man Ray’s photogram, an old and classic shooting technique in which the subject is placed on chemically treated paper and exposed to a light without using a camera resulting to a monochrome image, Nishimura’s Scangram technique creates a luminous negative digital version of photogram. The visual reversed effect adds a mystic silhouette as if the image is captured under a moonlight. Nishimura sometimes describes his “Blue Flower” series as “flowers of the shadow” and is popular among his followers and collectors both in the East and West. Nishimura’s Blue Flower photo-catalogue is featured and available at Hermes in Paris, France.

 

Renowned Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama has described Nishimura’s works “as if there is a dream-like atmosphere surrounding the world of images created by the artist―a dream subtly cool, erotic and mysterious.” To quote:

“In the middle of the night, as I turn off the light and close my eyes, there appear spectacles of various lights glowing like phosphorescence in the back of the eyelids, slowly flowing across the retina. Whenever my senses experience this indefinable transition of light, I find myself immersed in Nishimura’s visions.  A journey into a sensual, alluring world of the microcosms― “Blue Flower” is a sublimation of Nishimura’s creative sensitivity.”
 - Daido Moriyama on Yoichiro Nishimura’s Blue Flower

Born in 1967 in Tokyo, Japan, Yoichiro Nishimura received his Photography course at Bigakko, an alternative School of Art in Japan. The artist has exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions throughout Japan, the Netherlands, and France. Nishimura has recently won Gold Prize for his “Blue Flower” photo-catalogue in Japan, among other awards he received throughout his career. Nishimura’s works can be found in the collections of Daido Moriyama, K’MoPa Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, and Zen Foto.
The artist lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.  

About Fabrik Gallery

 

Founded in 2007, Fabrik Gallery’s ambition is to showcase the works of some of the world’s most collectable emerging and mid-career artists, and outstanding works by acclaimed contemporary artists. Featuring original paintings, limited editions, sculpture and photography from its space in Sheung Wan, the gallery team is informed and welcoming in engaging both the seasoned collector and first-time buyer.

Italy: Le Temps Retrouvé by Alain Laboile

29 Arts in Progress Gallery, Milan, Italy
Until February 09, 2019
More information: HERE