Photography sensation in Berlin | FAZ | EUROtoday

Comparing footage cannot damage. In artwork historical past they generally result in astonishing insights. In the TV information they a minimum of present leisure. Since 1956, “Original and Fake” has been the title of a guessing recreation in “Hörzu” with the comparability of two virtually similar footage, considered one of which has been modified by ten little issues. Art in Germany has maybe by no means been seen extra intensively than earlier than this web page.

“Dialogues” is now the title of an exhibition on the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin, for which Bettina M. Busse and Matthias Harder have hung 66 historic pictures from Bank Austria’s 4,000-image Vienna Photographis assortment, every with a print from Helmut Newton’s basis archive. Some issues are of compelling proof, equivalent to the mix of a deformed nude in André Kertész’s distorting mirror from 1933 with Helmut Newton’s nude from 1994, boldly seen from a worm’s eye view, as if he needed to wink on the basic with the picture. Others make a extra sought-after impression, equivalent to Charles Baudelaire’s excessive brow subsequent to Jack Nicholson’s.

And nonetheless others are surprisingly unimaginative, such because the composition of again figures or portraits of women in entrance of the mirror. Then one can’t assist however get the impression that the 2 curators have been primarily all in favour of highlighting their data of their very own collections. Look, Matthias Harder might have thought in view of Duane Michals’ nine-part, surreal sequence “Things Are Queer” a few lavatory, look right here: Helmut Newton as soon as did an commercial for Villeroy & Boch – and presents three sportily dressed girls who’ve shouldered extremely polished sinks and bathrooms and are dragging them considerably pointlessly by a fort backyard. Things are simply unusual.

But Matthias Harder would not say that. What he says is far more fascinating: specifically, that it was solely the comparisons that allowed him to deliver into his home the historic pictures that he completely needed to point out. According to the statutes, Newton have to be a part of each exhibition. What Harder achieved with this may, with a transparent conscience, be described as a coup. With works from Robert Adamson and Diane Arbus to Heinrich Kühn and Man Ray to Fox Talbot and Edward Weston, the exhibition brings collectively the most effective from virtually all genres of the medium and invitations you to take an exquisite stroll by the historical past of pictures.

The indisputable fact that the pairs of photos typically complement one another and typically contradict one another is simply the icing on the cake. Nevertheless, one needs to be amazed at how numerous Newton’s work is and the wealth of concepts he developed not just for portraits, nudes and trend, but in addition for motifs far past these genres. If the standard of Newton’s photos drops greater than as soon as in comparison with the neighboring photos, it exhibits a sure greatness to point out them anyway. On the opposite hand, greatness within the literal sense turns into one’s personal assertion. Newton’s portrait of the aged actress Anita Ekberg in an inhumanly giant format actually kills Angus McBean’s small glamor portrait of the younger actress Vivian Leigh, taken a 12 months earlier than “Gone with the Wind”.

Even by such excessive mixtures, that are constantly known as diptychs within the exhibition, “Dialogues” presents itself as a lesson in seeing. Because the astonishing impact of Duane Michals’ sequence with the toilet, whose first and final footage are similar, however whose final image is seen with totally different eyes because of the weird, gradual shifts of the motif inside the sequence, is transferred to the whole exhibition, even whether it is simply the only graphic similarities or duplication of content material, equivalent to stairs going up and down or girls with a canine. As the attention jumps from left to proper and again, the photographs frequently reveal new data.

Thinking about Edward Steichen’s and Helmut Newton’s totally different picture options for a self-portrait is simply as thrilling as taking a look at how they cope with the American flag, which a younger, serious-looking patriot proudly carries in Diane Arbus’s hand throughout a pro-Vietnam War demonstration in 1967, whereas in Newton’s picture of Ed Ruscha in 1988 it hangs as a pop artwork portray on the wall of his studio. For the customer, leisure and data coincide in an exquisite approach.

Dialogues. Collection Photographers and Helmut Newton. Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin; till February fifteenth. No catalog.