“Through the Lens of Candida Höfer,” interview profile courtesy AsiaAlter

In Lost Places: Sites of photography at Hamberger Kunsthalle in Germany (through September 23, 2012), 20 innovative contemporary photographers respond to the question: ”What happens to real places if a space loses its usual significance and can be experienced on a virtual plane?”

These artists, many who came out of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s renowned Dusseldorf School of Photography, which championed the de-emphasis of the perspective of the photographer and focus on the object’s command over the frame, present the documentation of landscape at a time when traditional notions of “space” and “place,” for better or worse, are rapidly changing.

Artist included in the exhibition are: Thomas Demand (b. 1964), Omer Fast (b. 1972), Beate Gütschow (b. 1970), Andreas Gursky (b. 1955), Candida Höfer (b. 1944), Sabine Hornig (b. 1964), Jan Köchermann (b. 1967), Barbara Probst (b. 1964), Alexandra Ranner (b. 1967), Ben Rivers (b. 1972), Thomas Ruff (b. 1958), Gregor Schneider (b. 1969), Sarah Schönfeld (b. 1979), Joel Sternfeld (b. 1944), Thomas Struth (b. 1954), Guy Tillim (b. 1962), Jörn Vanhöfen (b. 1961), Jeff Wall (b. 1946) and Tobias Zielony (b. 1973).

Gursky, Höfer, Ruff, Struth, and Wall were all featured in Stefan Gronert’s large-format volume The Dusseldorf School of Photography (Aperture 2010). In the fascinating video series “Contacts: The Renewal of Contemporary Photography,” Gursky and Wall describe the methodology behind their work.

In 2005, Aperture also published Höfer’s monograph Architecture of Absence, which features her meticulously composed images of public spaces marked with the richness of human activity, yet largely devoid of human presence.

Gütschow, “who constructs cityscapes and landscapers that are reminiscent of well-known places, but that do not allow any true reference” for her photographs in this exhibition, did a monograph with Aperture as well in 2007 called LS/S.

Work by Joel Sternfeld was featured in Aperture issue 192 and 180. Guy Tillim appears in Aperture issue 193.

Lost Places: Sites of Photography
Exhibition on view:
June 8 – September 23, 2012

Hamberger Kunsthalle
GlockengieBerwall 20095
Hamburg, Germany
+49 (0) 40-428-131-200

Tautira, Tahiti (4510702), 2010, © Guy Tillim

Exhibition on view:
Through March 17, 2012

James Harris Gallery
312 2nd Ave. S.
Seattle, WA
(206) 903-6220

South African photographer Guy Tillim is appearing in his first solo exhibition in the United States at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle, WA. Second Nature synthesizes the beauty of the French Polynesian landscape and discerning art historical references such as Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian ‘primitive’ paintings.

Tillim has deviated from his background documenting the effects of South Africa’s apartheid, child soldiers, famine, death, and decay. He now provides us with idealistic, romantic views of sprawling landscapes bestrewn with a contemporary human presence contradictory to the environment. Panoramic views and day-to-day minutiae make up this exhibition of six, large-scale photographs.

A book of these photographs titled Second Nature will be published by Prestel.

Tillim was featured in Aperture issue 193.

Grande Hotel, Beira, Mozambique, 2008. © Guy Tillim

Appropriated Landscapes

Exhibition on view:
June 16th, 2011–May 13th, 2012

The Walther Collection:
Reichenauerstrasse 21
89233 Neu-Ulm / Burlafingen
Germany
+49 731 1769 143

The Walther Collection’s Appropriated Landscapes is a group exhibition focusing on contemporary landscape photography. The exhibit explores a wide range of issues—including war, colonization, and ideology—and their effects on the Southern African landscape. Appropriated Landscapes attempts to expand the definition of  “landscape” beyond geographical or physical space, by looking at it as a mental and social construct that influences individual and cultural identity. The exhibit features fourteen artists, including three photographers who have been previously published in Aperture: Mitch Epstein, Mikhael Subotzky, and Guy Tillim were featured in issues 168, 188, and 193, respectively.

Guy Tillim, Adrian Pacasi, Pedro Gitali and Jose Arao, 2002

The Walther Collection opens today with an exhibition of work by African and German artists. “Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity” is comprised of four projects, shown in nine different galleries. The group exhibition in “the White Box” will include photographs by Guy Tillim, featured in Aperture magazine, issue 193. The galleries are open by appointment only.

The Walther Collection:
Reichenauer Straße 21
Neu-Ulm, Germany

Maputo, Mozambique, 2007 © Guy Tillim

Exhibition on view:
Avenue Patrice Lumumba: Photographs by Guy Tillim
Wednesday, April 29–Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Exhibition Opening & Book Signing
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 5:00 pm

FREE

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Harvard University
11 Divinity Ave.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
(617) 496-1027

Avenue Patrice Lumumba, an exhibition by the award-winning South African documentary photographer Guy Tillim, opens this Wednesday. The exhibition documents grand colonial African architecture and the way it has shaped the contemporary urban environment in Africa. As the first recipient of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography at the Peabody Museum, Guy Tillim travelled around Angola, Mozambique, Congo and Madagascar to photograph his vision of colonialism in Africa. Even though people are peripheral objects in these photographs, the images retain their intimacy, as evidenced by the number of personal objects, like an umbrella, a book or a purse, that were left behind.

A selection of photographs from the series was featured in the winter 2008 issue of Aperture magazine.

The winter issue of Aperture magazine (issue 193) features:

• A Magazine in the Making
Peter C. Bunnell revisits the first issue of Aperture on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the magazine’s founding editor, Minor White.

• Susan Meiselas: Nicaragua
John Berger considers Meiselas’s powerful project on Nicaragua’s civil war in the 1970s.

• The Author As Photographer: Early Soviet Writers and the Camera
Erika Wolf examines authors who tried their hands at photography in the post-revolution Soviet Union.

• Phillip Toledano: Phonesex
Portraits of behind-the-scenes workers who make a living with their voices.

• Richard Misrach: Untitled
A selection from Misrach’s newest body of work, plus a bonus poster included in all subscriber issues!

• Deep in the Archive
An exploration of photography that engages the concept of the archive, by Ulrich Baer.

• Guy Tillim: Things As They Seem
Tillim documents colonial-era architecture and decay throughout Africa.

• On the Edge of Clear Meaning: Reconsidering the Work of John Wood
David Levi Strauss explores how Wood’s photographs and photo-based multimedia works tackle politics with poetry.

• Disappearing Giants
Michael “Nick” Nichols, the veteran wildlife photographer, tracks endangered elephants in Chad and Kenya.

PLUS: Exhibition reviews from London, New York, The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Tokyo

Available at newsstands now or subscribe and get the bonus poster from Richard Misrach.