NIKOLAY BAKHAREV – AMATEURS AND LOVERS

Posted on 2013-07-15

Bakharev’s work has historically been divided between private and public. In 2012 we included a selection of the public work in a three-person show along with Miroslav Tichy and Gerard Fieret. In Amateurs and Lovers we will combine images from both private series, made between 1980 and the present. During the Soviet era it was illegal to photograph nudes in Russia, so the public bathers provided a surrogate. Taking on the role of “beach photographer” enabled Bakharev to both earn a living and depict his subjects in a much more revealing way than was officially permitted. He carefully arranges his subjects into compelling poses in which the physical contact is erotically charged, and at the same time display vulnerability and elegance. Later, Bakharev arranged to photograph his subjects at home, often having met them at the beach. While the private images of women or couples photographed nude in their homes are more provocative and overtly sexual, they are also homey, with strange selections of objects inserted into the interiors including books, paintings and liqueur bottles that seem to indicate a hidden but deliberate iconography.

As a critic in the Economist said of the Ostalgia show : “All of this art is political, by the simple act of its creation.” Bakharev was an orphan (his parents died when he was four) who worked as a mechanic until he developed his profession as a self-trained photographer. He grew up in East Russia near Mongolia where he still lives. The beautifully printed and modestly scaled black and white photographs of Amateurs and Lovers are serious and playful, mysterious and direct, connected to other photographers (Arbus, Judith Joy Ross, Nicholas Nixon) and very much their own vision. Bakharev is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Exhibition runs through till August 19th, 2013

Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York
NY
10011

www.saulgallery.com

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ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE – FETISH

Posted on 2013-07-15

Mapplethorpe took his first photographs using a Polaroid camera. He did not consider himself a photographer, but wished to use his own photographic images in his paintings, rather than pictures from magazines. “I never liked photography,” he is quoted as saying, “Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand.” His first Polaroids were self-portraits and the first of a series of portraits of his close friend, the singer-artist-poet Patti Smith. These early photographic works were generally shown in groups or elaborately presented in shaped and painted frames that were as significant to the finished piece as the photograph itself. The shift to photography as Mapplethorpe’s sole means of expression happened gradually during the mid-seventies. He acquired a large format press camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. These included artists, composers, socialites, pornographic film stars and members of the S & M underground. Some of these photographs were shocking for their content but exquisite in their technical mastery. Mapplethorpe told ARTnews in late 1988, “I don’t like that particular word ‘shocking.’ I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before… I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them.”

During the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe’s photographs began a shift toward a phase of refinement of subject and an emphasis on classical formal beauty. During this period he concentrated on statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and formal portraits of artists and celebrities. He continued to challenge the definition of photography by introducing new techniques and formats to his oeuvre: color polaroids, photogravure, platinum prints on paper and linen, cibachomes and dye transfer color prints, as well as his earlier black-and-white gelatin silver prints.

Exhibition runs through till August 31st, 2013

Galerie Stefan Röpke
St. Apern-Strasse 17-21
50667 Cologne
Germany

www.galerie-roepke.de

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MILES ALDRIDGE – SHORT BREATHS

Posted on 2013-07-15

Beauty is always bizarre. I don’t mean to say that it is deliberately, coldly bizarre, for in that case it would be a monster that has gone off the rails of life. I say that it always contains a hint of the bizarre, which makes it Beauty in particular – Charles Baudelaire

Presented as large scale prints, SHORT BREATHS brings together a body of work which explores sensuality and malaise in modern life through a language of vivid colour and unexplained narratives. Aldridge’s images of beautiful women placed in a hermetically sealed parallel universe of luxury are both thrilling and unsettling. Executed with the precision of a Hollywood movie, their power derives from the tension created between exterior perfection and internal turmoil.

Aldridge has said about his work, “A slightly uncomfortable quality is what I’m after. I don’t feel like making happy pictures about beautiful models being content… these pictures… they’re pictures of humans not mannequins. They’re troubled, wounded and confused, questioning who they are now that they have everything they want.”

Born in London in 1964, Aldridge studied illustration at Central St Martins and briefly directed music videos before becoming a photographer in the mid-90s. He has published his work in many influential magazines including Vogue Italia, Numéro, The New York Times and The New Yorker. His work was showcased in Weird Beauty at the International Center for Photography in New York in 2009 and he has works in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Exhibition runs through till September 28th, 2013

Galerie Stefan Röpke
St. Apern-Strasse 17-21
50667 Cologne
Germany

www.brancolinigrimaldi.com

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