View & Reviews The Face of the Century Julian Germain Photography

The Face of the Century. Foto's van Julian Germain
Germain, Julian; Kessels, Erik
ISBN 10: 9080392774 / ISBN 13: 9789080392779
Published by Amsterdam, DO Publshing, 1999
hardbound, silver boards, 8vo n.p. (ca. 200 pp.), ca 100 ills 100 fotoportretten, één van ieder geboortejar vanaf 1899 t/m 1999, dus van een 0-jarige t/m een 100 jarige

A series of chronologically sequenced portraits of 101 individuals, commencing with a 100 year old, ending with a newly born baby.

“….As we look we search, compare ourselves…We become part of what we view. This sense of common purpose is intensified by the unremarkable faces set before us. Their ordinariness, and the wealth of revealing (comforting) detail that frames each face, begs us to make confident assertions about class, age, gender, fashion and personality.

Science invites us to delve deeper. The twentieth century gave us the double helix. Each one of these supposedly average faces represents a genetic apex reaching back millennia. Beneath each one of these 101 facial surfaces lies a journey of cosmic complexity. Somehow it seems appropriate. Each face unique. Yet each the product of millions of others. Unremarkably remarkable.” 
Martin Herron, essay from The Face of the Century, Do Publishing, 1999.



Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Age and Experience
The exhibition I had at the National Media Museum in Bradford nearly 10 years ago featured a selection of works from several portrait series; ‘Face of the Century’, ‘Generations’, ‘Babybabybaby’, ‘For every minute....’ as well as some of the early Classroom Portraits. I remember being a bit disappointed that I ended up calling the show ‘Lifetimes’ because it’s just seems a bit of a dull title really, but on the other hand, it so clearly describes one of my overriding preoccupations: Life and time, as recorded by photography.


One of my favourite portraits featured in that show is of Mildred Harrison, aged 99, who I met on a visit to a care home in Northumberland in 1999. She was a tiny, hunched figure, almost bent double in her chair. There were a few other people around but she wasn’t in conversation or attempting to watch the TV. I thought she might be asleep but when I spoke she answered immediately and clearly. She was expecting me and she said she had just been “waiting to have her picture taken.” As I set up my camera and tripod I told her about my Face of the Century project and that I’d been searching for someone born in 1900 for months. She understood exactly her place in the chronology of the series. When I asked if she could please look up and in to my camera she did so, but not enough. Her eyes were looking up but she was facing down. “I’m sorry Mildred, but I really want to see your face properly. Do you think you can lift your head a little more?....Just a bit more please?....Just a tiny bit more.....?” Gradually, with considerable effort, she managed to do it for a few seconds. 





Mildred Harrison, aged 99, 1999. From 'The Face of the Century'


As I was there and made the picture, I cannot see this image as just an image, my feelings about it being inextricably linked to the whole experience of meeting as well as photographing her. But I am sure there is something very profound evident in the portrait. On the surface, there is the realisation that I cannot imagine anyone looking older than her and I am drawn in to considering her as she is and imagining her as she has been in the past. Then there is the physical and psychical commitment she makes to the process of being photographed. The strain and concentration of both looking up and presenting herself to camera, looking so directly into the lens and at the same moment into the extraordinary complexity of her 99 year old inner self.


I keep coming back to these existential themes. I seem to be drawn to making connections between the young and the old. Very elderly people fascinate me as do children and especially newborn babies. Lives that have only just begun and others which are in their twilight months and years. 
    
A few weeks ago, on September 10th, William Cameron and Alexander Ramm, both from the Ashington area (also in Northumberland) had birthdays, Bill reaching the landmark age of 100 and Alex being born. In the grand scheme of things there is nothing particularly unusual about either event as there are now about 14,000 centurians in Britain and nearly 1000 babies get born every day. But for the individuals and their families (and simply in human terms) these are truly momentous occasions and by making portraits of them both I am searching for added meaning by their association. Two people at opposite ends of life’s spectrum. I am contemplating the gulf between their experience, Bill having outlived every one of his contemporaries, Alex being perhaps the ultimate enigma, so new to the world and so newly formed that it seems impossible to imagine the life behind his gaze.





Alexander Ramm, born September 10th 2014





William Cameron, born September 10th 1914

Yesterday's Paper China in the PhotoBook Dirk Jan Van Den Berg Photography

2007   《Yesterday's Paper》 Dirk Jan Van Den Berg   
Photography Exhibition

Dec. 15 to Dec. 16, 2007

Venue: XYZ Gallery

Phone： 010 8459 9299

Initiator  :   Frederike  Mijnlieff

Curator： Fan Xueyi            Catherine Cheng

Dirk Jan van den Berg took up photography in 2003. “The introduction of the digital SLR’s created the opportunity to control the entire workflow from taking the picture to printing the picture. It ended my everlasting frustration with unsatisfactory development and print work of photo laboratories during the analog days.” Living in New York for 5 years and now living in Beijing has provided him with ample inspiration; thousands of photo’s are the fruits of long walks in both cities.

“My camera is the extension of the visual senses. It stills moments of people, objects and structures that otherwise would last seconds or even less. A good picture is not a mere image; it reflects emotion, it tells a story in a split second. I like my photographs to fit a template of diagonals and straights, probably reflecting strive for rationality and order. I am pleasantly surprised to find out that people like my work, it means that my hard drive is no longer its terminal station. It is a great pleasure that some of my work is put on display for other people to enjoy”.

Dirk Jan van den Berg was born in 1953 in Hilversum in the Netherlands. After his studies in econometrics at the State University in Groningen in the Netherlands, he embarked upon a career in the Dutch civil service. He had several positions in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; he served his country as the ambassador to the United Nations in New York. Currently he is the ambassador to the PR of China. In January 2008 Dirk Jan van den Berg will leave the Dutch foreign service and will assume the position of President of Delft University of Technology.

Beijing, 15th of December 2007.

Views & Reviews A Play of Selves Cindy Sherman How We See: Photobooks by Women 10x10 Photobooks Photography

Cindy Sherman: A Play of Selves door Cindy Sherman (Fotograaf) Hatje Cantz (2007), Edition: 1st, 128 pages

The New York Public Library's Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs is pleased to host the How We See Reading Room, a public space to browse and view the 100 21st-century photobooks selected for the How We See: Photobooks by Women book and tour. The Reading Room will be open October 25-27, 2018, 10 AM-5:45 PM at The Margaret Liebman Berger Forum (Room 227) in the NYPL Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

As part of the program, please join us October 25 at 6:30 PM for a conversation with two of the ten experts who selected the photos for the series, and one of the editors from the 10X10 team, as they examine how important the photobook is as a medium for women today, 175 years after the publication of the first photographically produced book. Learn more or register for the event.

More on How We See: Photobooks by Women
How We See: Photobooks by Women, the latest project in the nonprofit 10x10 Photobooks’ ongoing series of reading rooms, presents a global range of 100 21st-century photobooks by female photographers.

With historical records establishing 19th-century British photographer Anna Atkins’s British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843-1853) as the first photobook, it is not surprising that women have consistently contributed to the rich history of photobook making. However, despite their significant presence within the photobook community, the women have a relatively small place among top prizes, within prominent photobook publisher inventories, and among widely promoted books compared to their male peers.

10x10 Photobooks has organized How We See—a hands-on reading room, 'books on books' publication and series of public events—to explore the distinctive qualities of photobooks created by women photographers. The goal is not to isolate these books, but rather to closely examine their content, design, and intellectual attributes as a means of understanding and re-establishing their place within the larger photobook practice.

See also 

Dutch Female Photopgraphers How We See: Photobooks by Women 10x10 Photobooks Photography

Cindy Sherman: A Play of Selves
Cindy Sherman

A Play of Selves

May 23 – June 15, 2007

Opening: Wednesday, May 23, 6-8pm

Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers

7A Grafton Street

London W1S 4EJ

Tel. + 44.20.74081613

Fax + 44.20.74994531

http://www.spruethmagers.com

london@spruethmagers.com

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to exhibit ‘A Play of Selves,’ Cindy Sherman’s seminal work from 1975 at their Grafton Street gallery in London.

In the introduction to the recently published catalogue for ‘A Play of Selves’ (Hatje Cantz, 2007), Sherman states: “This is the only work I’ve ever done that was consciously autobiographical.”

American photographer and film-maker Cindy Sherman, born 1954 in New Jersey is known for her conceptual self-portraits in which she fully transforms herself into different personas with the use of make-up, costumes, play acting and even prosthesis. Sherman’s work questions visual representation by addressing the false naturalness of photography, in particular the images of women which are promoted by mass culture such as movies, television and magazines as reality. Some of her most important series of works include “Untitled Film Stills” (1977- 1980), “Centerfolds” (1982), “Disasters” (1986- 1989), “History Portraits/Old Masters” (1988- 1990) “Sex Pictures” (1992), and “Clowns” (2003- 2004).

‘A Play of Selves’ comprises 72 photographic assemblages which Cindy Sherman cut out of black and white prints in 1975 during her last college year in Buffalo, New York, and marks one of the first uses of herself as a subject in staged photographs. Having originally used the cut-out figures for an animated film (‘Doll Clothes,’ 1976) she soon realized that the figures could interact with each other. A film script developed, the story of a young woman overwhelmed by various alter-egos working at odds with her and her final conquering of self-doubt, played out in four acts and a finale with 16 separate characters. The scenes incorporate the allegoric figures ‘Madness,’ ‘Vanity,’ ‘Agony’ and ‘Desire’ that evoke the conflicting aspects of the female protagonist, which appears in different situations as ‘Broken Woman,’ ‘The Actual Main Character’ and ‘The Character as Others see Her.’ Only at the end does ‘Broken Women’ become the ‘Actual Main Character.’

Cindy Sherman lives and works in New York City. Since the 1980′s, her work has been collected by major private and institutional collections worldwide. Most recently, a large-scale retrospective organized by the Jeu de Paume, Paris travelled to Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria and is currently on view at the Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark until May 20, concluding at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany (15 June – 17 September 2007).

‘A Play of Selves’ will be on view at Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers, 7A Grafton Street, from May 23, 2007 through June 15, 2007. Opening Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm and by appointment.