Alexei Leonov, on history’s first space walk, outside Voskhod 2, CCCP march 18, 1965
silver gelatin print on glossy fibre
Self Portrait, Chuck Close 1979
unique polaroid
Amiens, Last Judgement Tympanon, Bisson Frères (Louis-Auguste 1814-1876 and Auguste-Rosalie 1826-1900) 1858 albumen print from glass negative on original mount
München 64, Floris Neusüß 1964
unique photogramm (nudogramm)
This April Daniel Blau Ltd. is very pleased to present a
selection of images that question the role of identity and scale the vintage
photographic oeuvre. Since photography’s beginning the question of
representation and truth has been widely discussed, complicated by the medium’s
insistence on “realism”. In a photograph grandeur is minimised, compacted, and
fixed like Baltic amber pulled from the sea, ensnaring the maker’s “vision” in
reduced format.
Moving along into the 20th century, photographic technology
advanced to such a degree that the operator of the camera no longer even needed
to be present – imagine the first view of Earth from Space encrypted in video
and produced in a Californian Lab. We can think back to the origins of
photography and to Daguerre with his famous dioramas – large-scale theatrical
backdrops that intended to represent more closely the feeling of being pulled
into a vision of the mountains and streams of ancient Greece. So what happens
when we reduce the idea of optics to a singular two-dimensional object? Can we
identify our place within the frame or must we also compress, reduce, and rend
the photograph to fit our own scale within the universe?
We live in a new era of rapid technological advancements built
upon major achievements such as the infamous atomic bomb testings in the
Pacific atolls. Why should our understanding of our place within the frame not
also advance?
Please join us for our opening on Thursday 19th April from 6 – 9
pm at 51 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB.
