The Langhans Gallery Prague

Traces of important events and omens of decisive phenomena today. These works by photographers from different countries considered the question of how much photographs merely document reality or, by c

The exhibition was a selection of works shown at the 2005 Noorderlicht Photofestival. Curator: Wim Melis.

The Dutch-born photographer Annet van der Voort ponders today´s emphasis on beauty and youth: she juxtaposes large photographs of the faces of old women today and small portraits of 1930s beauty queens who are their contemporaries. For ten years Adrienne van Eekelen photographed a girl called Raphaëla as she became a young woman, in order to show something “pure, honest, and real” in the times we live in. The reconstruction of the past is what the Chinese photographer Bo Hai attempts here, linking portraits together with pictures of what was fundamental to the lives of those portrayed. The Australian Helen Kudrich recorded the consequences of the tsunami in Thailand: showing the contrast between the erstwhile luxury of expensive tourist resorts and the dismal scenes after the tsunami she is making a statement on human vulnerability and the false sense of security, which possessions can give. Kai Bornhöft presents a critique of the mechanization of life in Western society: with photographs of the breeding and harvesting of fish he shows human beings´ alienation from Nature.

Owen Logan uses a Michael Jackson impersonator to show that Nigeria remains a country where the black inhabitants serve white expatriates as cheap labour, and also that Jackson has repudiated his roots to gain a wider white audience. The American Larry Fink stages his photographs: in the series “The Forbidden Pictures” he ridicules the cynical, bullying ways of American politicians. He says, for example, that his photograph of a George W. Bush look-a-like whose hand is on the breast of a woman model “should be seen as a metaphor for our foreign policy, which consists of putting our hands where they don´t belong and the imperious abuse of our power.”

The other projects here also commented on the political situation in the world. Anoek Steketee travelled to Iran to find out for herself just how much the Western-media picture of the country corresponded to reality. She discovered that within the confines of their own homes Iranians are relatively free, but on the streets they are subject to the mores of Islamic society. The French photographer Gladys has documented life in the little American town of Laredo on the US-Mexican border, where almost every night many Mexicans try to cross illegally into the land of liberty and opportunity. Her photo series “Casa Ortiz” documents a family that lives in the colonial Laredo house of that name. Within the historical atmosphere of Casa Ortiz, the residents conduct themselves as if were in another era. The line separating dream from reality is a thin one.

One of the most conceptual works exhibited here was James Nakagawa´s set “MA – Between the Past.” He has interwoven photographs made by his father and grandfather with photos he made himself in the course of time, producing a visual family history spanning three generations. By manipulating photographs, the Turkish photographer Ali Taptik creates his own reality, rearranging relations, playing with facial expressions, and changing atmospheres. The result is a fictional autobiography that will ultimately take the place of his own history – not only for those viewing the photographs, but also for Taptik himself. In his video loop “Der Weg” (The Way), Hiroyuki Masuyama has sophisticatedly summed up the four seasons of one year in several minutes, during which the viewer goes on a walk of almost half a kilometre with the photographer.

The exhibited photographs analyzed public events and also the private lives of the photographers. With the analysis of their own lives, however, the photographers were often commenting on a fabric of relations that are also social and political. Photographic testimony leaves traces that call for interpretation. A trace becomes not only a piece of evidence, but also an omen, a warning.