“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

New Year, 2010, © Jowhara AlSaud

Kicking off the 2012 art season, check out highlights on view throughout New York! See below for some of our favorite Aperture artists and galleries.

New Photographers at Dazinger Gallery, January 12–February 25, introducing five emerging photographers unlinked to one another through content but brought together for their first time exhibiting in New York City. Featured photographer Tereza Vlčkovà from Aperture’s groundbreaking book, reGeneration 2: tomorrow’s photographers today.

Silverstein Annual at Bruce Silverstein Gallery, January 14–February 25, offers exposure to ten up-and-coming photographers who have been chosen by ten prominent curators, including Nelli Palomaki, reGeneration 2 artist. View her limited edition prints available through Aperture.

Penetration at Foley Gallery, January 12–March 3, recreates the photographic image with five artists who interrupt the common photographic process. Portfolio Prize 2008 Runner-Up Jowhara AlSaud’s portraits of faceless figures, inspired by censorship, are personal photographs made into drawings etched on the surface of a negative, view her limited edition prints here. Pushing the capabilities of photographic paper itself, Marco Breuer scratches and scrapes the light-sensitive paper making conceptual, abstract imagery. See Breuer’s limited edition book by Aperture Early Recordings and Untitled 2007 and the highly acclaimed compilation The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, he was also featured in Aperture magazine issue 172.

Joel Sternfeld: First Pictures at Luhring Augustine, January 6–February 4, displays a selection of Joel Sternfeld’s earliest photographs, taken between 1971 and 1980, documenting his travels across America through vibrant colors twined with wit and satire.

Visions: Tim Hetherington at Bronx Documentary Center, through January 22, is the inaugural exhibit featuring photography and multimedia work produced by photojournalist Tim Hetherington who was killed in April of 2011 as he covered Libya’s revolution.

First Look at Yossi Milo Gallery, January 26–February 18, is the inaugural exhibition at the new gallery space located at 245 Tenth Avenue. The photographers included all had their first solo New York City exhibition presented by the Yossi Milo Gallery. These artists include Robert Bergman, Mohamed Bourouissa, Pieter Hugo, Simen Johan, Sze Tsung Leong, Loretta Lux, Yuki Onodera, Muzi Quawson, Mark Ruwedel, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Lise Sarfati, Alec Soth, Kohei Yoshiyuki and Liu Zheng. A celebration will be held in honor of these photographers on February 16 from 6:00–8:00 pm.

© Joel Sternfeld, A Railroad Artifact, 30th St, May 2000
Section 2 of New York City’s High Line is now open and there’s an entrance on West 28th Street, just around the corner from Aperture Gallery and Bookstore on 27th St. Wednesday, June 8th was the first full day that the new section was open to the public with summer hours from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm.

At West 18th Street check out Joel Sternfeld’s A Railroad Artifact, 30th St, May 2000 the first work in Sternfeld’s project Landscape with Path, which documented the High Line before it was converted. This image, which celebrates the transformation of the High Line into an urban walkway, can be seen on a large 25-by-75 foot billboard. Sternfeld has invited two other artists, Robert Adams and Darren Almond, to pick up where he left off and create new work . Adams and Almond’s work will be exhibited on the same billboard in August and October respectively.

Another Joel Sternfeld project, Oxbow Archive, that meditates on seasonality in the age of climate change, was featured in Aperture magazine 192.

Untitled Film Still #43, 1979, © Cindy Sherman

Exhibition on view:
Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West

Sunday, March 29–Monday, June 8, 2009

MoMA
Special Exhibitions Gallery, third floor
11 West 53 Street
New York, New York
(212) 708-9400

Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West is now on view at the Special Exhibitions Gallery at MoMA. The exhibition’s theme evolves around the importance of photography in shaping our collective imagination of the West.

Since 1850, photography has certainly played a fundamental role in the revolution of the American West, and has helped form and change our perception and image creation of the West’s physical and social landscape, through a variety of photographic traditions and genres.

Into the Sunset brings together over 120 photographs, dating from the ninetieth to the twenty first century, that integrate a range of different artistic strategies and motifs. The photographs, which are organized thematically, illustrate a piece of cultural heritage, and help us understand how general ideas about the West, as Manifest Destiny and the “land of opportunity,” have evolved through the years.

The exhibition features work of approximately seventy renowned photographers including Aperture-published Robert Adams, Katy Grannan, Dorothea Lange, Timothy O’Sullivan, Cindy Sherman, Joel Sternfeld, Edward Weston.

In conjunction with the exhibition, MoMA also holds lunch lectures and discussion panels on Monday, April 6 and Thurday, April 9 both at 12:30 p.m.

In addition, the museum offers a special lecture for deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors, as a part of Interpreting MoMA, on Thursday, May 14, at 5:30 p.m. 

Melting Ice, Parson’s Swamp Road, March 24. 2007. Photo by Joel Sternfeld

Joel Sternfeld: Oxbow Archive

Exhibition on view: September 6, 2008 – October 4, 2008

Luhring Augustine
531 West 24th Street
New York, New York

Tomorrow is the last chance to see the Joel Sternfeld exhibition at Luhring Augustine gallery. The exhibition is comprised of large-scale photographic prints from Sternfeld’s new Oxbow Archive series, which is featured in the current issue of Aperture magazine. The images exhibited both in the show and the magazine document seasonal changes taking place in a nondescript field of Massachusetts. As Aperture contributor Gretel Ehrlich notes in her article on the series, these images not only capture the scenery, but also are symbolic reminders of climate change. Sternfeld describes the field in his images as, “just an ordinary field. Completely unmemorable.” Yet he notes, “no matter how often I come, it’s never enough. There’s so much here. Every minute brings change…the scene is a whole story in itself.”

New Aperture magazine with Josef Koudelka, Duane Michals, Joel Sternfeld, and more!

On sale at newsstands now or click here to subscribe.

The fall issue of Aperture (issue 192) features:

Claudia Angelmaier: Reproduction Art
A reflection on the age of mechanical reproduction in the work of art by Brian Dillon.

Invasion 68: Prague by Josef Koudelka
An in-depth interview with Koudelka about his documentation of the Soviet-led invasion of Prague.

Walead Beshty: Piece By Piece
Jan Tumlir examines Beshty’s protean engagement with photography.

Leaving Kansas: A Look At Second Life
Fred Ritchin gives a tour of the Internet’s alternative to reality, Second Life, through the photographs of Michael Schmelling.

Framing the Presidency: The Evolution of the Campaign Image
Robert Hariman discusses how candidates have been depicted photographically over the past century.

Re-Viewing Rear Window
David Campany considers the role of photography in Hitchcock’s classic film.

Duane Michals: Chromophilia
Robert Kushner comments on a portfolio of Michals’s most recent work in color.

Hanatsubaki: Perfection is Lifeless
The long life of an adventurous Japanese magazine, by Jason Evans.

Joel Sternfeld: Oxbow Archive
Gretel Ehrlich looks at Sternfeld’s latest project in a meditation on seasonality in the age of climate change.

And be sure to catch the Invasion 68 Prague exhibition, photographs by Josef Koudelka, at Aperture Gallery in New York City September 4 – October 30, 2008.