La Stars Foundation of Milan home until the 7 April a great exhibition event: AUGUST SANDER AND MICHAEL SOMOROFF ABSENCE OF SUBJECT.
The exhibition connects the German photographer
August sander (Herdorf, Germany, 1876 – Cologne, 1964), one of the most important figures in photography of the XNUMXth century, with the contemporary American photographer Michael Somoroff
(New York, 1957) and it is
curated by Diana Edkins and Julian Sander, organized and promoted by the Stelline Foundation, in collaboration with ADMIRA, presents 40 photographic works by Sander, taken from the famous series Twentieth Century Men, and 40 photographs by Somoroff accompanied by six videos, which constitute a touching tribute to the work of the German master.
Twentieth Century Men is built over time by Sander as a catalog of humanity capable of representing a pluralist vision of the society of the Weimar Republic, far from the myth of the Aryan race, and is divided into seven sections: the Peasants, the Traders, the Women, Classes and Professions, Artists, Cities and the Last (homeless, veterans, etc.).
Somoroff worked on them with a conceptual intervention, digitally erasing the human figures, to reach the essence of the places – silent streets or empty interiors – and highlight, through the absence of the subject, the relationship between the presence of man and the landscape.
Somoroff has removed in each original shot what can be considered the “essential element” – the subject, the portrait – keeping only the environment. The backgrounds that formed a secondary element in Sander now become the main subject, and are transformed into works conceived in a completely new way.
Through a conceptual, but also humanistic approach, his work reaches the essence of places and the intrinsic relationship between the presence of man and the landscape. An action only apparently arbitrary, but which denotes how Somoroff intimately understood the lesson of the German master, who did not want to limit himself to a simple portraiture, common to part of the photography of the time. Thus Somoroff demonstrates the persuasive and aesthetic power of Sander, even in the absence of the human subject. While bringing out thehorror vacui of silent streets or the silence of the empty interiors of the houses, the figuration of the typical features of that particular society remain unchanged.
August sander (1876 Herdorf, Germany – 1964 Cologne) is considered the most important German portrait photographer of the early 1902th century. Of humble origins, he learned the art of photography assisting a professional who worked in the mine where he was employed as a labourer. He studied painting in Dresden and in 20 opened his first photography studio in Linz. In the 1980s he joined the "Gruppo degli Artisti Progressive" in Cologne and began to plan a project to create a real "catalogue" of society through portraits of German men and women of his contemporaries and of the professions of his time. The entire project was only published in XNUMX in the famous volume Twentieth Century Men, divided into seven sections: the Peasants, the Merchants, the Women, Classes and Professions, the Artists, the Cities and the Least (homeless, veterans, etc.). His first book Face of our Time (1929) contained, in fact, only a first selection of sixty shots.
During the Nazi regime, Sander suffered numerous limitations and acts of oppression which culminated in violence against his son Enrich, a member of the Socialist Workers' Party, sentenced to ten years' imprisonment and died shortly before his release. In 1936 copies of Face of our Time are seized and the plates destroyed, and he has to interrupt his project, dedicating himself mainly to portraying the Rhine countryside (1934-1939, work published in book form only in 1975) and the city of Cologne (1935-1945, object of the publication posthumouslyDas alte Köln of 1984). In 1944 a bombing destroyed his studio and 40.000 negatives. Sander then retired to Kuchhausen in the Westerwald and his name was almost forgotten until 1951, when he, at the international fair photokina his photographs are exhibited and the Stadtmuseum of Cologne buys the entire archive of city views.
In 1964, the year of his death, he received the culture prize of German Society for Photography, but the real turning point in the knowledge of his work is the great retrospective organized in 1969 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Michael Somoroff (New York, 1957), son of art, was a enfant prodige of photography. In 1979, in fact, at the age of only twenty-two, he held his first solo show at the International Center of Photography in New York, under the supervision of Cornell Capa, who launched his sensational career. She then opened her own photography studio and began working for major magazines in New York and Europe. He is influenced by the revolutionary philosophy of Alexey Brodovitch, like many other artists of his generation, which encouraged experimentation and innovation. In 1980, after moving to Europe, he worked in London, Paris, Milan and Hamburg collaborating withVogue, Harper's Bazaar, Stern e LIFE extension. He also continues to develop his personal work, traveling throughout Europe and North Africa. Great photographers such as Brassaï and André Kertész are among his most important teachers.
Existential philosophy, religion, theory of languages, psychology and postmodern deconstruction remain the main themes of his work. Since he returned to New York, he has dedicated himself to his research artistic production. His works are held in numerous world-class collections, including the MoMa - Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (Texas), the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Somoroff carries out educational activities and regularly collaborates with various cultural institutions creating programs that use art to improve communication between people and the communities in which they live.
In 2006 he was called to create a large sculpture, Illumination I, for the outdoor space of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, the only other artist together with Barnett Newman. In 2011 the exhibition "Absence of Subject" is presented for the first time in a complete way during the Venice Biennale.
