EYE TO EYE

The Groninger Museum has an extensive and unique collection of photographs. A selection of these will be on display in the autumn of this year, from 17 September to 4 December. Work by important photographers from both home and abroad will be on show.

Since the 1986 exhibition Fotografia Buffa; Staged Photography in the Netherlands, the Groninger Museum has regularly exhibited and purchased photographic work. The Museum consistently placed its own emphasis on these events. In addition to the staged photography, the last two decades have witnessed presentations of advertising, fashion and glamour photography. This resulted in exhibitions of work by Dutch photographers who have now become world renowned, such as Anton Corbijn and the duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. Another line in the collection is formed by the work of a number of American photographers who are primarily concerned with the fringes of society, such as Andres Serrano and Larry Clark, whose provocative exhibitions in Groningen in respectively 1997 and 1999 are still fresh in many people’s memories.

Besides the photographers mentioned, a number of others also occupy a crucial position in the collection, such as Teun Hocks with his melancholy stagings that always have a double meaning; the razor-sharp exuberant photography by Erwin Olaf; and the very internationally oriented work of the young fashion and portrait photographers Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm. The pioneering work in computer graphics and photo-manipulation with which Micha Klein has been busy for years will certainly be on display in this exhibition, as will be the erotic photographs of Cornelie Tollens and the advertising work of Carli Hermès. Many of the photographs referred to have been printed in an extremely large format, which occasionally leads to an almost physical confrontation.

Furthermore, the exhibition will present photographs by people who can be regarded as the precursors of a number of the present-day photographers, such as the celebrity photographers Angus McBean and Paul Huf, and the more socially engaged Diane Arbus. Due to the fact that people are prominent in the majority of the photographs in the Groninger Museum’s collection, the decision has been made to lay the emphasis on portraits and (staged) self-portraits. Thus, the exhibition also presents visual artists who appear in their own work by means of photography, such as Gilbert & George, Ulay/Abramovic, Luigi Ontani, and Milan Kunc.

Pressetext

OOG IN OOG / EYE TO EYE
Photographic collection of the Groninger Museum

mit Diane Arbus, Anuschka Blommers / Niels Schumm, Larry Clark, Anton Corbijn, Gilbert & George, Carli Hermes, Teun Hocks, Paul Huf, Micha Klein, Milan Kunc, Inez van Lamsweerde, Vinoodh Matadin, Angus McBean, Erwin Olaf, Luigi Ontani, Andres Serrano, Cornelie Tollens, Ulay  & Abramovic ...