Status:19 - Dansk Journalistforbund - Exhibition Bus Højbroplads

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Part of the Copenhagen Photo Festival, this is an exhibition of 100 photographs by professional photographers shown as digital images on a mobile exhibition venue - the PIXLBOX or exhibition bus from PIXLART.

More than 2500 images were submitted by photographers who are members of DJ: Fotograferne … a section of Dansk Journalistforbund or the Danish Union of Journalists … and reflect a broad range of photographic work from commercial photography through portrait work, art photography and photo journalism.

The photographs were selected within an overall framework of five themes …

  • portrait

  • commercial

  • communication

  • art

  • journalism

 In the exhibition bus the images are digital, shown on a number of screens of different sizes and set portrait and landscape, and several images were shown cropped on more than one screen so there was an interesting opportunity to see how the message or story from an image changes with editing.

Shown on large, high-resolution screens the images have an intensity and depth that is rarely there on the printed page … just compare the images in the exhibition with those in the printed catalogue. That is not a criticism but simply the reality of keeping down the cost of printing the catalogue but then it becomes simply an aide memoir.

The large digital images showed strong vibrant colour where appropriate; the smallest detail in high resolution images and the nuances of soft light in the portrait by Søren Bidstrup of Lars Von Trier in a misty autumn landscape in a river valley.

The images scrolled through so there were often fascinating juxtapositions of images that established a momentary dialogue from the contrast. At one point an informal but still formal portrait by Niels Hougaard of HKH Prince Joachim, second son of the Danish monarch, in military uniform, was set, for a few seconds, next to an image by Rasmus Flindt Pedersen of a street in Mosul as people dealt with the bloody and grim reality of war.

It is a good exhibition space that is restricted but that actually means you focus on the image directly in front of you and the space is designed to have some seating to watch all the images on each screen scroll through and, above all, it is designed to bring art to streets and public spaces anywhere where people do not have easy or direct access to art. 

Many - on fact most - of the images are about context and back story - about why or what might or what probably happened next. Many capture just how weird life can be.

 

this exhibition was shown first through May in Viborg.
Status 19 in the exhibition bus is on Højbroplads
from 6 June to 11 June, 11 - 19

 

COPENHAGEN PHOTO FESTIVAL
DJ: Photographers - Status 19
PIXLART
PIXLBOX

 

Fang din by - forandring / Capture your city - change 2019

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Fang din by - catch or capture your city - is an annual photographic competition at Dansk Arkitektur Centre - the Danish Architecture Centre or DAC - that demonstrates “that our cities are full of quirky details, historical corners, new urban spaces and fantastic architecture.”

This year the theme of the exhibition is transition in the city because our cities are changing every day and that change is fast. "We adapt to climate change, building height, the old is torn down creating new urban spaces." Information about the competition posed two questions ….

How does it look when old meets new? 
Is the transformation of our cities always good? 

Along with information about submission of images for the competition were also the recommendations that photographs should not only reflect the theme for this year but should also be an "exciting composition" and show the "interaction between urban space and people.

The competition was open to professional and amateur photographers and this year 3,000 people submitted images.

A final selection was made by a jury with Maja Dyrehauge Gregersen, Director of Copenhagen Photo Festival; the photo journalist Janus Engel Rasmussen, and Christian Juul Wendell, Head of Communications at the Institut for (X) and project manager at Bureau Detours.

The overall winner was announced at the opening with the second and third prize and there was a second and separate competition for schools and again the winner and second and third prizes were announced.

Fang din by was organised in collaboration with the Copenhagen Photo Festival and the opening coincided with the opening of the Festival.

the exhibition can be seen outside on
Bryghuspladsen in Copenhagen
- the public square in front of BLOX -
from 7 June through to 30 August

for the first time this year there will also be a separate but closely-related exhibition - showing a different selection of images - that will be moved between a number of venues around the city.

That exhibition can be seen at:

  • Nytorv - 7 June to 20 June

  • Israels Plads - 21 June to 4 July

  • Rådhuspladsen - 5 July to 18 July

  • Kultorvet - 19 July to 1 August

  • Den Røde Plads - 2 August to 15 August

  • Højbro Plads - 16 August to 30 August

  

Dansk Arkitektur Centre - Fang din by
Copenhagen Photo Festival
Bureau Detours
Institut for (X)

Fang din by on Bryghuspladsen

 

Fang din by on Nytorv

Patterns Shimmer Scenes - photographs by Joachim Koester at Statens Museum for Kunst

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I was at the opening for the exhibition of work by Joachim Koester but decided, on balance, that the subjects shown in his series of images are not close enough to the city or to architecture and design in Denmark to be relevant for a review here but going back recently, to spend more time in the exhibition on a quieter day, I realise I was wrong.

It is not the subject of the photographs, although those are interesting, but it is about ways of seeing - about having a viewpoint - and it's about the selection of that view point, the artist editing the scene, to create or, at least, to hint at or imply a narrative, that is an important lesson.

Koester was born in Copenhagen in 1962 and studied at the Schools of Visual Arts at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and he works now with photography, sound and video.

The images shown in Patterns Shimmer Scenes are presented in clear groups and come from very specific projects including with others:

  • Some Boarded Up Houses that is a series of photographs taken in the United States after the financial crash of 2007-2009

  • The American artist Ed Ruscha documented a number of empty plots in 1970 and collected them in a book Real Estate Opportunities. Koester recorded some of the same plots in his work Occupied Plots, Abandoned Futures Twelve (Former) Real Estate Opportunities 2007.

  • photographs taken in Kaliningrad follow the route of a daily walk taken by the philosopher Immanuel Kant when he lived in the city that was then called Königsberg

  • a series of photographs of amazing buildings in Calcutta traces marked changes from an Imperial past - where affluence was based in part on money from the British East India Company trading opium that was grown in Afghanistan and shipped on by the Company to China. *

These are “enigmatic images of abandoned places with stories that reveal incredible pasts” and generally record desolation and waste. Apart from the photographs from Calcutta, there are rarely people in the images. Particularly in the American photographs, Koester takes his photographs straight on to the façade, and with parallax removed, and sharp detail across the image, he removes or flattens the sense of perspective or distance so the buildings become specimens to be examined closely and, with boarded up windows and empty yards, the photographs expose decline and abandonment that has taken place over years or over decades.

Some of the photographs are selenium toned silver gelatine prints that have deep rich tones of warm greys and that also creates a curious sense of detachment in a world where now it seems anyone and everyone takes so many colour photos.

Many of the buildings are boarded up - most look unoccupied - so, above all, the photographs record waste … how humans construct buildings that are extravagant, are expressions of wealth or of optimism or both but they are abandoned and history or events leave them stranded.

 

 
 
 

note:

* a recent article in The Guardian included the astounding statistic that the British shipping company P&O transported 632,000 tons of opium from Bengal to China.

 

the exhibition continues at Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen until 3 February 2019 

 

MONO - exhibition catalogue

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The catalogue for the Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition in 2018 at Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen has a general introduction to the exhibition by the selection board and then for each work there is a double-page layout with a full page black and white photograph for each of the works.

These monochrome images are dramatic and chime with the theme of the exhibition but also give a strong emphasis to the form of each work.

Some pieces have a descriptive or evocative name - so Calm or Look don’t touch and a cabinet for the display of special possessions has the title Ego - while other titles are more straightforward, with works described as Chair or Table and Chair.

Of course the catalogue sets out the name of the designer and the name of the cabinetmaker or the company who realised the work and each entry includes the materials and the dimensions of the piece.

There is also a short paragraph on each work to set out any thoughts that inspired the design or to talk about technical details - many of the pieces use material in an innovative way or the construction is much more complicated than is immediately apparent - and there is a translation in English.

Graphic design is by Studio Claus Due and the black and white photographs were taken by Torben Petersen.

Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling / The Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition 2018

Thorvaldsens Museum

Studio Claus Due

 

A Visual Inventory by John Pawson

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This is not so much a review as a simple signpost to an important book.

A Visual Inventory is a collection of annotated images with the photographs taken by the British architect John Pawson when travelling. The book is about colour and about light - so how colours change with different qualities of natural light - but the images are also about the photographer being aware of and sensitive to shape and form and texture and pattern and of age or how buildings and landscapes and materials change over time … those basic elements of all architecture and all design. Above all, the photographs invoke a strong awareness of place as different latitudes and different climates can be associated with what are often distinct colour ranges or tones and with specific patters and forms of building.

Above all the book is an insight into how an architect and designer sees his world and what draws his attention and what, specifically, he looks at and records for inspiration in his work.

Single images are printed on each page with short notes but are set in pairs across each double-page spread and linked by shapes or subjects or location. None of the photographs have been cropped or altered so the process of taking the photographs is clearly considered with care so they reflect, in a straightforward and honest way, the reaction to the subject by the photographer at a specific moment.  

John Pawson also has an Instagram site that should be bookmarked by anyone trying to appreciate and understand our landscapes and our buildings in terms of colour and tone and texture.

 

A Visual Inventory, John Pawson, Phaidon (2012) 

John Pawson on Instagram